DW Oneshot: Time is Out of Joint

[jesterladyfic]

Title: Time is Out of Joint
by Jesterlady
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Amy/Rory
Summary: Rory has lived many lives and their memories clash and splinter and flow into one another and it can be very hard to remember who he really is.
A/N: I'm a little late to the ball with this Rory fic and I haven't seen S6 yet so who knows how completely off the mark I am, but this is what struck me after watching Big Bang.
Disclaimer: I don't own DW. The title is from William Shakespeare. Spoilers for 5x12 and 5x13.

A companion piece is Call Back Yesterday



Time is Out of Joint

Rory's life was different now. Which most would assume natural considering he spent it time-traveling with a bow-tie wearing alien in a blue box. But it was even more different than that. He had three lifetime's worth of memories stuffed into his head, vying for his attention. It was a constant battle to remember which life he was in, which Amy he was loving, which Doctor he was following. He had his life traveling with the Doctor and he had his life as a Roman centurion and he had his life where the Doctor had never existed. Sometimes he couldn't even decide which one he wanted to be true.

His habits had changed. He never quite went all the way crew cut, but
he'd never grow that ponytail now. He was a bit fanatical about keeping his and
Amy's room on the Tardis clean. They didn't spend much time in there anyway,
always too much to do. There was basically a wardrobe and a bed with various
knick knacks and alien souvenirs from trips past and future on Earth and other
planets scattered everywhere. After living as a Roman, Rory built a bookshelf
for them to keep everything on. Amy, for once, hadn't argued, but simply
remarked on his new need to keep everything in order. She didn't know the half
of it.

Just because it was her favorite period in history didn't mean she knew
what it was like to really live that way. To not be able to do or say any of
the things that had come so naturally to him at that time. To be under the
fierce rule of a Roman general, to live in the barracks, to travel endless
legions marching on his soft feet, to feel the sticky blood of another man on
his sword. Life had been incredibly brutal back then and just when he'd thought
it was over, he'd been turned into a robot (living plastic, whatever that really
meant) and forced to kill the woman he loved.

And just when it seemed like that would finally end, he'd stayed. He
didn't regret staying for one minute, he'd definitely owed that to her, but it
had been lonely and maddening and exhausting. So many centuries of waiting, so
many threats averted, so many times when he'd wanted to bash his plastic head in
on the side of that horrible box. He'd stayed a Roman for that whole time. It
wasn't until World War II that he'd finally shed his centurion garb, exchanging
it for something more modern. But at that point it was a lot easier for him to
keep watch on the box by more conventional means.

He'd done other things with his time too. He'd finished med school and
gotten his medical license, he'd traveled the world with the box and he'd met
more famous people in history than he could have imagined, and that was after
traveling with the Doctor.

And now he was here, back in his original time, well, still
time-traveling, and married to the love of his life. He had everything back
that he wanted, including his original skin. He wouldn't be living another two
thousand years. Yet, he was still stuck with the memory of them all, with the
feel of the heat on his ever-so-capable-of-melting-away face, with the knowledge
that Amy had left him for the Doctor and then chosen him and then forgotten him
and then there was no Doctor at all. It was so confusing, so frustrating and it
felt like the other two hadn't experienced it at all. Like it didn't matter to
them. Amy had slept for those two thousand years and the Doctor had skipped
over them. The Doctor hadn't been around for the life that he was never in, and
Amy seemed to have melded the two lifetimes with apparent ease.

There was a quiet moment once when he and Amy were lying in their bed.
The Doctor had actually been confined to bed rest after a nasty scare with some
aliens looking for payback and the Tardis had restrained him amid much
protesting. It left Rory and Amy to explore the Tardis or make up their own
brand of fun, which was quickly the option picked considering how much time they
didn't get to just be together.

Amy lay in his arms and he ran his fingers through her hair. It was one
of the times when he didn't feel so conflicted, like he was three different
people. One of the times where he felt rested, like he wouldn't mind living
this life forever. As long as he had Amy (and the Doctor) he could do
anything.

Amy shifted beside him and tugged the covers further up her bare
shoulder.

“Can't this box ever keep warm?” she grumbled.

Instantly a wash of warm air blew over them and Amy smiled happily at
the ceiling and kissed his cheek as if he'd had anything to do with it.

“Are you happy?” he asked her.

“Happy and warm,” she said, snuggling into him.

“No, just happy with life?” he asked again.

She looked up at him, a touch of insecurity in her face.

“Aren't you?”

“Right now I'm quite blissful,” he said. “But sometimes...sometimes I
remember something else. I remember being someone else.”

“Ah,” she said and was quiet for a moment. “Sometimes it's like that,”
she said. “Sometimes I remember life without the Doctor and it's not bearable.
And the time when I forgot you.”

It wasn't quite what he meant, but he felt a little bit better anyway.

Sometimes he was a little paranoid about Amy's safety. He'd spent
century after century making sure she was safe and sometimes it seemed like she
was a little bit too reckless. It was something he'd loved about her in that
other life, but now, it just felt like he was failing her. Or he'd get twitchy
when she put her arms around him, like somehow he could shoot her again. He was
beyond thinking that she'd choose the Doctor over him, in any of his lives; but,
maybe, he'd become a little bit too crazy for her to take and one day she'd just
not choose him, whatever else she chose otherwise.

Sometimes he woke up at night dreaming about the wars he'd fought in and
the people he'd killed, mainly her, and he'd get out of bed and pace the halls
of the Tardis. Mostly it was Amy who would wake up and come find him and bring
him back to their bed and make him forget for a little while. Make him see only
her and the movements of their bodies and the melding of their love. But
sometimes it was the Doctor who would see him – the Doctor never really slept –
and he'd look a little bit sheepish like he didn't know how to handle basic
human comfort; which, to be fair, he probably didn't. But in the end, he'd
distract Rory with a brilliant adventure story or he'd show him some marvelous
wonder in the Tardis that Rory hadn't seen before. It wasn't much, but it would
help a little bit. Then Rory would go back to bed and slip into Amy's waiting
arms, and in the morning he'd feel more like a complete person.

But his life and memories were a fracture of time and it didn't matter
that the Pandorica had spliced everything together again. It didn't matter that
the Doctor had sacrificed everything to save the universe. It didn't matter
that Amy had somehow brought the Doctor back. Rory himself was split and
divided and he couldn't remember who he really was. He lived three lives
simultaneously and which one was really better in the long run? Somehow he knew
a life without the Doctor didn't bear thinking about. And he already knew that
life without Amy was not even an option. He ran around in circles in his head
and the charade of funny, bumbling Rory was only sometimes a charade. He was
everything and nothing and everything in between. He'd lived, died, been
forgotten, come back to life, and been history.

He'd read some of the papers people had written about The Lone
Centurion. Sometimes they'd made him laugh and others he'd had to weep over.
Most were absolute nonsense and, naturally, none of them mentioned living
plastic or Scottish girls from the future or aliens of any kind. His favorite
was the drawing of him pulling the box from the London Blitz flames. It had
been one of the hardest things he'd ever done and the hardest part had been
knowing that the real life Amy should theoretically be somewhere close by,
meeting Winston Churchill and saving the world. But the world had been changed
at that point and history was all wrong, was all different, was all Doctor-less
and Amy-less.

He felt incredibly old. And he was. The combined lives he'd had, well,
it didn't make up immortality but sometimes it felt like it might as well have.
Sometimes he stood in the console room and felt like he was in charge of two
scrabbling toddlers. Amy was still so very young and while the Doctor may have
been old, he deliberately didn't act like it. Sometimes Rory thought that the
Doctor wouldn't want him around anymore because he wasn't young now. He got the
feeling that the Doctor liked to be around the young, helping him to forget what
he'd been through. It was a coping tactic that Rory occasionally tried himself,
but it didn't seem to work as well for him.

He got mad often. Mostly he kept it to himself. It wasn't their fault,
it wasn't their fault, it wasn't their fault. Or it was their entire fault.
Either way, sometimes he felt like sectioning himself. Oh the papers that
doctors could write on him, his neuroses, his so-called delusions and his
stories. Nobody could possibly believe lives such as the ones Rory had to call
normal. So he bit his tongue and he let the Doctor ramble and Amy snipe and
when they'd finished he stepped in to settle it. Whatever rot it had been.
Grown-up, three-lived Rory Williams, the Roman/Auton/Human doctor.

He supposed he was still technically a nurse since this life had never
seen him finish his degree. But he had the knowledge and he studied to keep up
with it whenever he could. The Doctor sometimes would look askance at him when
Rory made a diagnosis, but didn't say anything. Rory had saved both of their
lives since they'd started traveling together again. How could someone speak
out against that, even if they didn't understand it?

Rory wanted to laugh when the Doctor got all puffed up about how old he
was. Most of the time. He was good and kept quiet so much of the time. But he
couldn't take it anymore.

“Well, as the eldest at nine hundred in this room, I think the question
is a bit moot, yes? Yes,” the Doctor said and turned back to the console as if
the matter was entirely settled.

“Uh, two thousand over here,” Rory said, raising his hand.

The Doctor spun back around, looking both annoyed and fascinated at the
same time.

“Well, if you want to get slightly more technical, I'd say about
eighteen hundred and ninety-fou-”

“That's still a thousand years on you,” Rory roared.

Amy and the Doctor looked at him, stunned.

Rory turned away and clenched the console rails so tightly his knuckles
went white. He couldn't think straight, he couldn't remember who he was, what
life he was living. He couldn't pretend anything.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and he turned, expecting to see Amy
either showing a rare moment of compassion or prepared to rake him up and down
for being stupid. Either would have been welcome, really. Instead the hand was
the Doctor's and when Rory's head faced back their direction the Doctor was only
inches away.

The Doctor put his hands on either side of Rory's face and looked him
straight in the eyes. Rory wanted to shudder. The Doctor's eyes were so
timeless. All nine hundred years of expanding universes were looking at him.
It didn't make him feel any better or like the Doctor was worse off than he
was. The Doctor was equipped to live that long, Rory was not. But he could
understand the Doctor better now and if they ever came across any of those dream
crystal things again, Rory would bet that he could give the Doctor a run for his
money in the drawing-darkness-out-to-use-against-them contest. The thought
terrified him.

“Oh, Rory,” the Doctor said softly. “Good Rory, funny Rory, gorgeous
Rory. I can't tell you why that happened. I don't know why the universe chose
you or Amy or me. But here we are and we'll never be the same again. I'm so
sorry for your lives, for what you've been through. But you made the choice to
stay there and you know what that makes you?”

Rory's eyes skittered over to Amy's and she was watching them with an
inscrutable look on her face.

“W-what?” he stammered.

He'd never had the Doctor look at him with such focus and intensity
before. He'd been brushed by, overlooked, laughed at and forgotten but never
made the single point of the Doctor's existence. He didn't like it. That must
be what made the monsters run.

The Doctor's face split into one of his huge grins.

“The very best of humanity. The absolute best specimen and I only carry
the best.” He pressed his hand on Rory's heart. “And this is your best, right
here. Whatever life you're living, whatever role you're playing, however old
you are. You're Rory Williams and you belong here. It's still your choice.”
The Doctor stepped back and spread his arms wide. “But I can only offer a life
where these things can happen. Is that what you want?”

Rory looked from the Doctor to Amy and felt like he lived all nineteen
hundred and forty-four years all over again. (The Doctor had forgotten his
other two lives.) They all flashed through his mind and the fractures seemed to
fly together and coalesce into something more tangible, more comfortable, more
him.

“Yes,” he said softly.

“Okay then,” the Doctor said and clapped his hands together and seemed
to move on.

Just moved on while Rory leaned against the railing and felt like he'd
just died and come back to life. Again.

“Yeah, sure,” he said.

The Doctor turned back round and Rory felt the intensity of his stare
again. The Doctor stepped close and put his hands on Rory's temple and Rory
wondered at the Doctor's strange new propensity for putting his hands on
people's faces.

“There is...” the Doctor began “...I can take it away. I can make those
lives never happen or I can take away the parts that make it hurt the most.
You'll still be you, still have Amy and me, but...is that something you feel
like you need? Rory Williams, Centurion made of Living Plastic and just as
human as the rest of us, well, not me.”

Rory again looked at Amy and he couldn't tell anything from her face.
He'd never known her to stay quiet for so long. She just looked at him with her
eyes. Rory looked back to the Doctor and sensed that the other man was trying
to tell him something.

The pain, the guilt, the shame, the awkwardness, the loneliness, the
disorientation, the multiplicity of his life...it could all go away.

“No,” he said softly, then louder, “no!”

“I can't hear you,” the Doctor cried, whirling away from him.

“No,” Rory shouted, the answer seeming to burst from his throat. “Those
memories, those lives are mine and I paid for them. I won't let you take them
away.”

“Good boy,” the Doctor said quietly and then did one of his awkward head
bobs and winks and all the things he thought were subtle signs towards Amy, and
Rory rolled his eyes.

“Are you okay?” she asked him while the Doctor went back to fooling
around with the console.

“I'm better,” he told her and it was true.

He couldn't lie and tell her that he was fine, that there wasn't still
too much information jockeying for position in his head. But he felt more whole
than he had in a long time. Like the different pieces of his lives had finally
accepted one another. They would never be all the way closed like the Pandorica
had closed the cracks of the universe, but they would slowly heal over. And
this time he wouldn't have to wait two thousand years.

Amy slapped his shoulder and he flinched.

“Ow!”

“That's for scaring me to death,” she said and then pulled his head down
to hers.

She kissed him and with the first touch of their lips, he knew that no
matter where he was or who he was or what life he was living, she was his home;
she was the constant in the ever conflicting scraps of his existence.

“I might have to more often,” he said, grinning at her when they finally broke apart.

“I wouldn't even think about it, mister,” she warned him. “But I do
expect you to come to me first. Don't hold it in like that. I already have one
emotionally stunted man to look after; I don't need it in my husband too.”

“Noted,” he told her, cupping her cheek and seeing with the corner of
his eye that the Doctor had disappeared. “I'd love to take you up on that
offer, Mrs. Pond. Say, right now, in our room?”

“Absolutely,” she said, and threaded her hand through his. “And just so
you know, it says Pond-Williams on the certificate.” His eyebrow lifted and he
opened his mouth but she pointed a finger at him. “Don't say a single word.
Now get in there and take your clothes off.”

He simply picked her up and headed for their room.

No matter how different his lives are/were, they never really changed. And, after all, that was for the best.

I couldn't really wait to post this even though I normally wait quite a long time to post things. I'm in the process of uploading all my fic to AO3 and it's a lot of work. I realized today I've uploaded 67 works totaling 281,131 words. And that's only about half my stuff. Anyway...I'm still writing and I hope you enjoy.