The Adventures of the Doctor and Rory the Roman: Five

[jesterladyfic]

112 AD

It had only taken Rory about three nights to figure out that he didn't need to sleep anymore, confirming the Doctor’s words to him, which he had halfway hoped wouldn’t be true. It was really weird considering he had two different lifetime's worth of memories insisting that he did and had. But he never grew tired and he never got hungry and while that made guarding an easy job – no side trips to the loo, despite the cave's decided lack of such facilities – it also pretty much doubled the time that he was going to have to spend alert for the next couple of millennia. No eight hour respites for him.

Still, he made contingency plans and he practiced his sword passes and he wished he had one of those fish vampires here now. Amy wouldn't need to save him the next time he met one of those. Though they were all dead now, at least, in the other lifetime, and in this one too seemingly. But then, he could always shoot anything that threatened him now. After about eight years he finally started practicing opening and closing his hand – he’d wept the first time, amazed he could still cry and still felt guilty every time - and on his aim. He never seemed to run out of ammo and he spent practically an entire year wondering how that was possible.

He figured it was pretty much like what all those comic book heroes stranded on desert islands went through, learning their skills until they became practically superhuman. Only he already was. Still, if it was a movie, this would probably be a good montage point and he bucked himself up thinking about that for a couple of years and planning the whole movie out, pondering who they could get to play him and hoping it wouldn’t be a rubbish actor though it probably would be.

He explored the cave and made sure there were no more lurking Cybermen waiting around anywhere, but all he found was dust and statues of aliens who no longer existed because they'd feared the Doctor and formed an inter-universal alliance. Which, considering all Rory had seen, was very very odd.

He soon found all the exits and nooks and crannies underneath Stonehenge and he only wished his fifth form history teacher was around so he could finally earn that gold star. He would do an outer perimeter patrol – he liked to come up with official names for what he was doing, it made him feel less like he was a crazy plastic person living under a national phenomenon – every night, partially to make sure everything had stayed the same up top and partially to feel some kind of fresh air. It seemed very odd that he could still feel such things, air and touch, but his hair didn't grow and that was actually rather nice because it wasn't like he could do a thing like shaving properly with no mirror and a sword.

One night he was out roaming around the pillars and feeling rather like a weird creature of the night himself. There weren't really stars – he would find that odd except for the fact that all the other planets were dead – and he was going to ask his Doctor about the sun still burning the next time he saw him. There was a crashing sound behind him and he whirled around, switching his sword to his left hand and opening up his right hand-gun. Oh yes, he was getting quite ambidextrous now. The sky was raining down bits of rock and ash and it was a little bit freaky and he was quite glad the Pandorica was underground.

Something tackled him from behind and he dropped/threw his sword as he went down as he had no desire to get skewered. Who knew what that would do to his innards and he had no desire to see what they looked like now.

“Are you quite all right, young man?” his assailant asked, offering him a hand, and Rory looked up into the eyes of a man slightly older than himself with blonde hair and wearing a cricket uniform-ish type thing.

There was a stalk of celery pinned to his lapel.

Rory was starting to wonder if it had all been a dream again, but they were still under the night sky out in the wilds of pre-practically anything Britain.

“No thanks to you,” he said and scrambled for his sword, instead finding a bunch of molten rock that would have fallen on his head and pulling his plastic hand back hurriedly. “Oh, yes, well, thanks to you then.”

“Absolutely. No need to thank me. Why, it's Rory! How are you, old boy?”

Rory looked a bit closer and saw the man had the same ageless, time-filled look in his eyes as his Doctor. A little younger, a little less dark, but full of what the universe had used to be.

“Doctor?” he asked.

“Yes, that's me. How long has it been?”

“About ten years.”

“Oh, well, a great many more for me, I'm afraid. I'm in my fifth body now.”

“Smashing,” Rory said, rubbing his shoulder and wishing a bit ruefully that plastic people couldn't feel pain. “What are you doing here, Doctor?”

“Trying to prevent a volcano ship from exploding on Earth.”

“It's up there?” Rory asked, pointing upward.

“About five degrees north, but, yes, up there.”

“Then what are you doing down here?”

“Atmospheric pressure manipulation from the Tardis can blow the ship further away in order to catch some cosmic winds that will take it to a safe distance. The Earth's gravity, well, certain sections, are drawing the poor ship here like a magnet. Definitely not those poor creatures' faults. They had a bit of a collision with the moon, you see. It's a bit roasted, but that only makes it more mysterious, don't you think?”

Rory wondered if he'd followed all of that properly.

“Okay, so is there anything I can do to help?”

“Actually yes. I left Tegan up there in the ship, wrangling all those poor confused aliens around. She's quite good at that, isn't she?” Ignoring Rory's baffled look, the Doctor started walking briskly away from Stonehenge. Rory cast an agonized look back at the entrance to the underground, which he'd faithfully closed, and then followed the Doctor. “But I still need someone to help me in the Tardis.”

“We're not going to take off or anything, are we?” Rory asked.

“No need for that. We can do it all right here. No fear.”

“Hard to do around you, Doctor,” Rory muttered and if the Doctor heard him he gave no sign.

A short walk away, during which the Doctor chattered on cheerfully, talking about all the things he'd done since he'd last seen Rory, they found the Tardis. It looked exactly the same and Rory was a little surprised to feel a bit homesick.

He was even more surprised when he got inside and everything was so different, so color-less, that it was like a slap in the face.

“Ah, I see I've got it a bit different for you,” the Doctor said, striding toward the console. “But she's the same old girl, aren't you?”

He slapped the console gently.

Rory closed the door behind him and, even though it was odd, still felt at home.

“Welcome home, Rory,” he muttered and wondered if he was ever going to say anything in a normal tone of voice again.

“We're on a bit of a time-crunch, I'm afraid,” the Doctor said and started energetically flipping levers and pushing buttons.

It was all so Doctor-like that Rory smiled.

“Right, what do you need me to do?”

“Hold down here and push every other second there and watch this level here. I'll do all the rest, never fear.”

“All the rest, is it?” Rory asked wryly, but did as he was told.

They worked that way for about ten minutes, Rory not really understanding anything that was going on, and the Doctor talking the whole time. Rory felt a bit dizzy.

“Right, we've got it!” the Doctor cried. “Oh, Rory, watcher and waiter and all around amazing Roman, you did it! Say, you look a bit the same. No kind of anti-aging field or anything?”

“I'm plastic.”

“Plastic? Auton?”

The Doctor drew back, not looking quite as friendly, and Rory sighed even as he catalogued away this new name for his apparent species.

“Look, I'm an imprint of a real human and I've got all his memories and I am Rory Williams and I'll blast anyone who says different. I'm keeping my fiancée safe because of your foul-up, so don't tell me I'm not important.”

“Calm down,” the Doctor said, putting his hands up. “You could blow something and then what will you do, eh? Now, I can see you've been through quite a lot and if I didn't have to go back and fetch Tegan before she kills someone – Turlough never can keep her in line, well, not even I can seemingly - I'd ask for a bit more of an explanation. Perhaps next time?”

“Sorry, right, I'm sorry I blew up there. I just have a bit of an identity crisis going on. Am I human, am I Roman, am I plastic? I am all three.”

The Doctor's face softened even more.

“I'm sure whoever you are, you are absolutely essential. Thank you, Rory, for your help. Not only did you help save Earth today, but you've saved your fiancée.”

Rory had to smile at that.

“Thank you, Doctor.”

“Right, now it will only be a short walk for you back. I'd give you a lift-”

“That's okay,” Rory said hastily, not wanting to get swept off to the other end of the galaxy or anything like that.

The Doctor smiled, somewhat knowingly, and shook his hand.

“Pleasant waiting, Rory.”

“Until next time, Doctor.”

Rory left the Tardis and watched as it dematerialized into the night and then turned and headed back toward...home.

He was still slightly confused as to how this kept happening with the Doctor. He wondered if maybe they were messing up the space-time continuum or something. Even more. It was already pretty much a mess. And Rory didn't even really know anything about those kinds of things. Still, if this was going to keep happening, he was probably going to need to come up with some kind of list of rules or something. He wished he could just ask his Doctor if meeting his older – or, actually, younger - selves was going to really screw up when they were supposed to meet in the future. Or maybe that the Doctor would have warned him what to do in such an eventuality instead of just mentioning the possibility of such an eventuality. Maybe when he had warned Rory he'd just meant time was already so mixed up that it wouldn't matter who Rory met. But he still could have left him a handbook or something. That would have been great.

He sealed the entrance behind him and patted the Pandorica gently.

“Hi, honey, I'm home.”