The Adventures of the Doctor and Rory the Roman: Eleven

[jesterladyfic]

1996 AD

Rory was the ideal person to work night shifts and to cover for other people when they were ill or wanted free time off or what have you. Everyone at the museum loved him for that. And that’s how he’d been awarded the position that allowed him to travel with the box when it went on tour. But he’d argued strongly in favor of keeping it solely in the National Museum once Amy had been born so that, somehow, her DNA could revive her older self.

He’d made sure of that too. During the last century or so, his one great fear had been that Amy would never be born and then he’d…well, he didn’t know what he’d do. But he’d taken the time off, the longest he’d ever been away from the box - apart from those three weeks in the seventeen hundreds, but that was another story entirely – and gone to Scotland on her birthday to make sure she was there. She had been, a wrinkly, wispy, redheaded thing in the hospital nursery and he’d had to fight the urge to kidnap her and take her back to the museum. But he didn’t because he didn’t know what was supposed to happen and he was going to wait for the Doctor – his Doctor – to see how they would get Amy out. He lived in perpetual fear of messing up their one opportunity or something like that.

He hadn’t seen any Doctors since 1963, though, for a few weeks after he’d met him, Rory had noticed the First Doctor watching him surreptitiously, peeking around corners and glaring suspiciously at him. Rory’s memories still didn’t change and one day the Doctor just wasn’t there anymore and Rory could only suppose he’d flown off in the Tardis or something like that. It had been oddly reassuring to have the Doctor around for so long and so he was sad when it had happened. But Rory wanted, if nothing else, to keep time running.

Today had been a normal day. He’d been working for twenty-four hours, both as a guard and a professor. He’d gotten a tweed jacket on purpose for the second task. It had been slightly slippery to stay in one place and not have people notice that he never aged. But he’d experimented a bit with makeup – he sincerely hoped no one ever found out about the cosmetology class he’d taken – and it really helped when people who might start asking questions suddenly got erased from history, as horrible as that was. So Rory had been able to work as an academic in the day and a guard at night for at least the last fifteen years.

Today was normal up until Amelia Pond darted through the exhibition, past ancient Daleks without even caring, past him without even caring, and examined the Pandorica with an intensity Rory wanted to cry at seeing it was so familiar to him. There she was, the little girl who had captured his imagination and helped shape him into who he was. Who would grow up to be the love of his life and the reason he was there at all.
He still didn’t know what was going to happen. Was today the day? Why wasn’t the Doctor around? What did Amelia need to do? Should he speak to her? Then Rory’s eyes widened when he saw a bright flash and a fez and Amelia’s drink disappeared. And he relaxed. The Doctor was working on it. Rory would simply do his best to follow the yellow sticky note. He watched Amelia’s clumsy attempts at hiding and gently corralled all search efforts away from the Dalek exhibit. When night fell and he was officially on duty, he lied through his teeth on his walkie-talkie and said he’d seen her leave the museum. Then he patrolled and waited to see what would happen.

He was on the other end of the floor when he heard the crash and he raced back to the Pandorica exhibit, cursing at himself in Latin for having left it in the first place. When he got there, he held out his flashlight and then dropped it. He really missed his sword, but they’d never taken his gun from him – the gun he hated – so he aimed it at the Dalek.

“You think?”

The should-not-be-alive alien appeared to die again and Rory looked up.

There she was. She was alive, alive, alive. She wasn’t strapped in the box and she wasn’t an illusion. It was Amy.

“Amy.”

“Rory.”

And she was running toward him and he put his hands over his mouth and she was wrapping her arms around him and then all he could do was say the one thing he’d been bursting to say for two thousand years.

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I couldn't help it. It just happened.”

In true Amy fashion that didn’t appear to matter as much to her as Rory was sure it would have to other girls.

“Oh, shut up.”

She kissed him and it was beautiful. It was so so amazing. And he never ever wanted to stop. Dimly he was aware of the Doctor – his Doctor! – coming up behind them.

“Yeah, shut up, cause we've got to go. Come on!”

But Rory had other things on his mind.

“I waited. Two thousand years, I waited for you.”

It was like they’d never happened, those years, because he couldn’t have told you the name of the ship he’d sailed to China on with Marco Polo or how to ask where the loo was in French if you’d paid him. All he could think was Amy, Amy, Amy.

“No, still shut up.”

And she was kissing him again. And that was what he had waited two thousand years for. He had earned a nice, long snog.

“And break! And breathe!” the Doctor said from somewhere over Rory’s shoulder. “Well, somebody didn't get out much for two thousand years.”

Rory could appreciate the irony in that even through the absolutely amazing kissing going on.

Horrible Daleks. They interrupted everything nice. Soon they were doing the running thing – but the running was nice with Amy’s hand clasped in his – again. The Doctor slammed the door behind him and casually asked questions.

“So…two thousand years. How did you do?”

“Kept out of trouble,” Rory said lightly.

“Liar,” the Doctor told him, throwing him a grin. “How about the time when the Rezer scared your pants off? Though not literally since they were plastic and rather attached and that makes me happy though it rather looks as if Amy wouldn’t mind.”

“Doctor!” Rory scolded. “You weren’t supposed to remember! How would you like it if your own obstinacy caused the universe to implode!”

“That’s impossible, Rory,” the Doctor said. “The universe was already imploding. Besides, I did erase it. I just made another trigger to remember. And it’s very odd. My memories are shifting around faster than a hula dancer – I once spent a lovely weekend in Oahu in 5455, shame you weren’t there – because I’ve met you so often and we’ve created so many different timelines. It’s very dangerous; in fact, it’s causing the universe to implode. Rory, how could you let this happen?”

“Oh no,” Rory said, pointing his finger, “this is not on me. I begged you to forget me, I pleaded, I demanded, I nagged-”

“Yeah, you did,” the Doctor said rudely.

“-but you always knew best, you were the Doctor, even when you were the one who told me to do it in the first place.”

“Oh, fine, but it would’ve happened anyway. We’ve just caused it to be a bit faster than it would have otherwise.”

“Good, cause I rather liked what happened some of those times,” Rory said.

The Doctor grinned at him and launched himself at Rory, hugging him ferociously.

“Rory the Roman, mate of the centuries. I wouldn’t have traded your anniversary for all the tea in the Qukisp galaxy!”

“Uh, could I break into this little love fest?” Amy asked, her hands on hips. “What the hell did you two get up to without me?”

Rory and the Doctor looked rather guiltily at each other and Rory hastily backed away from their hug.

“Nothing,” the Doctor said, smiling with what Rory supposed the Doctor thought was an innocent smile.

“Waiting for you,” Rory said soberly.

And then the Dalek came back and the Doctor popped back to Stonehenge and then back again and then again and again. And then got Amelia to come to the museum in the first place and then she didn’t exist anymore and then the Doctor died.

An older version of him anyway and they did some more running and Rory finally found out why the sun was still burning – the Tardis blowing up, conveniently at the very same place the sun would be for night and day purposes – and the Doctor got River out and they ran again, the Doctor figuring things out all the way.

“When the Tardis blew up, it caused a total event collapse. A time explosion. It blasted every atom in every moment of the universe. Except...”

“Except inside the Pandorica,” Amy put in.

“The perfect prison. Inside it, perfectly preserved, a few billion atoms of the universe as it was. In theory, you could extrapolate the whole universe from a single one of them, like cloning a body from a single cell. And we've got the bumper family pack.

“No, too fast, I'm not getting it.”

Rory was confused again, which was good because he was getting tired of being the one to know everything and do everything.

“The box contains a memory of the universe, and the light transmits the memory. And that's how we're going to do it.”

“Do what?”

“Relight the fire. Reboot the universe. Come on!”

Amy, Rory, and River exchanged glances and then they followed.

It was, again, all very blurry from there. The Doctor died again, Rory shot the Dalek again, River was her usual – how did he know it was usual? – mysterious self and the Doctor had tricked them all. Again.

He waited for them in the Pandorica - that same box Rory had guarded so faithfully - and River explained to them what was going to happen. Amy started to argue with her and Rory took the opportunity to step closer to the Doctor.

“What about all the others, Doctor?” Rory asked.

The Doctor looked up at him, face dark and in pain.

“The others? Ah, the others. I can’t help them now, Rory. This is all I can do.”

“But I know you,” Rory said, feeling awful, “I know you. Saving the universe now and taking yourself out of it won’t save the universe from it not being saved from all the times you’ve saved it before.”

“You’ve been hanging around me for too long, Rory,” the Doctor said, somehow managing to smile. “That almost made sense. But it will work. It’s a brand new universe waiting to happen, just enough of a kick start to pass by those niggling things in the back of your brain, those little events that should’ve, would’ve, could’ve happened.”

“But everyone,” Rory said, “Sarah-Jane and Martha and Jamie and Amy and me, we won’t know you. You’re murdering our very lives.”

“Would you rather I murdered the universe?” the Doctor asked, sounding so tired that Rory felt guilty because he knew exactly what the Doctor meant and felt like because that’s how he’d felt. “This is what I can do for you humans. For the others. You know that better than River or Amy, Centurion, you know that.”

Rory nodded because he did know. He could appreciate the Doctor’s action and he could understand its purpose. He knew.

“All those things I learned about you and was going to rib you about for an eternity are going to be lost now,” he said, cracking a smile.

“I get the last laugh,” the Doctor said, somehow managing to sound smug.

“What was the trigger you used?”

The Doctor looked at him and blinked slowly, then smiled.

“Happy Rory. Happy Rory with Amy.”

Rory swallowed hard, holding back his tears.

“Goodbye, Doctor,” Rory said. “Tell me, tell me, which one are you?”

“Lucky number Eleven,” the Doctor whispered with a grin.

Rory nodded and the Doctor looked at him for a moment and then Rory stepped back, letting the tears fall, and let River talk to him again. The Doctor spoke with Amy last and then he was gone, crying Geronimo to the skies and taking one last ride through the universe.