![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
locker_monsterTitle: The Boy Who Waited (47/49)
Rating: PG
Characters: Rory, with appearances from Barbara
Timeline: set between "The Pandorica Opens" and "The Big Bang"
Summary: London, 1996. Barbara Wright prepares the Pandorica for exhibit at the National Museum. As the work unfolds, she recounts the lengthy history of the stone box and its loyal protector, the Lone Centurion.
Disclaimer: Doctor Who belongs to the BBC. Everything else is me taking liberties with history.
A/N: A huge thank you to my beta
punch_kicker15. This story would still be sitting on my hard drive if it weren't for you.
The shell exploded, throwing up debris in all directions. Rory would have thought that there was nothing left to be destroyed in no man’s land but he felt a piece of metal hit him in the back. It was like a light slap to him, but other pieces of jagged metal rained down around him, embedding themselves deep in the mud.
He looked down at Kilburn, who he had been tending. The second he had heard the tell-tale whistle of the shell, Rory had thrown himself over the major to act as a barrier. Beyond the broken leg the man had suffered, he had no other injuries.
“Hang in there.” He went back to work on the splint he had been making out of his and the major’s disassembled rifles and a length of bandage. He didn’t need his gun out here anyway. There was too much carnage and he had no time to think about shooting back.
“I’m fine,” insisted Kilburn, despite wincing as Rory tightened the bandage.
“You’re not. If the doctors don’t set the bone, it won’t heal properly.”
Another shell exploded, but this one further away. The German reinforcements had arrived during the night and the troops in the second and third trenches had been prepared for their attack. They were making it very difficult to make any progress today.
Kilburn gripped Rory’s arm in a vice-like hold. “Leave me. There are others who need your help more.”
He tried to yank his arm free. “The barrage-”
“I can crawl. I’ll manage.” When Rory didn’t move, Kilburn shouted, “That’s an order!”
Rory could have cared less about obeying the chain of command, but Kilburn was right. There were soldiers on the battlefield with worse injuries. It was the basic tenet of triage. The patients worse off were seen to first.
He finished tying the bandage so the splint would hold together. Grabbing his pack, he saluted Kilburn with his free hand. “Yes, sir!” Then he forced himself to his feet and he ran back into the fray.
He had lost track of his regiment not long after they had charged into battle. Seeing Kilburn had caught him completely off guard. Rory would have thought the major would be back with the artillery. Maybe Kilburn couldn’t stand by while the men in his command were mowed down by machine gun fire.
There were craters everywhere, some full of muddy water while others were full of bodies or body parts. Though it was a lost cause, Rory still checked the bodies in the craters. A wounded soldier would be desperate to take cover anywhere, even among the dead. He didn’t recognize any of the faces but that was of a little comfort. One more body meant one less son/brother/husband/father returning home to his loved ones.
Rory was soaked to the bone and probably carrying a few extra pounds of mud on him when the shell hit.
The explosion tossed him sideways and he ended up face down in a pool of mud. He rolled over before he could swallow any of it, but he still got mud in his eyes and up his nose. The sleeve of his uniform was far from clean, but a quick swipe of it over his face got rid of most of the muck. He looked around for his helmet, which had been knocked off of his head, but it was nowhere to be seen.
A few more feet to the right and he might have been caught in the explosion, not thrown aside by the pressure wave. Rory had a brief image of bits of plastic raining down on the ground and he suppressed a shudder. Jack had mentioned that he had survived being blown to bits once and the story had haunted Rory for days on end.
Giving up on his helmet, he got to his feet. There was a slight ringing in his ears from the explosion but he knew it would fade and it did nothing to dampen his heightened hearing. In fact, he didn’t have to concentrate hard to pick up on the sounds of soldiers calling for help.
Rory took off at a run, hoping to reach the soldiers before another barrage began. Bursts of machine gun fire sounded at irregular intervals and while it was hard to place where they were, he kept on the move. It was slow going, though. Running across the mud was like wading across an endless field of dough. The ground gave way with each step, offering no support. It was no wonder why he saw so many twisted ankles and broken legs.
He couldn’t hear the cries for help anymore; it took Rory a second to realize that. Had he gotten turned around?
He was foolish enough to slow down.
The mechanical scream of automatic fire cried out and it was much too close for comfort. Rory thought he could dive to the ground but faster than a speeding bullet he was not. A familiar, fiery pain struck him in the right knee and his leg crumbled from beneath him. No longer able to stay upright, he fell and tumbled.
He crashed along the ground, rolling end over end, catching glimpses of the grey sky and the brown mud. When he finally slowed to a stop, he had the luck to land on his head and stars exploded across his vision. Disoriented and with his knee feeling like someone had jammed a hot poker into the joint, he didn’t put up much of a fight when a pair of strong hands grabbed him around the shoulders and dragged him back.
Rory had a vague notion he was being dragged down an incline and it didn’t matter much until the top of his head was plunged into an icy cold pool of dirty water. The sudden temperature change jolted him awake and he bolted upright. At least, he tried to. The pain in his knee, not content to reside in one part of his leg, raced up the entire limb and he only managed to flop over onto his side before he could have another go with the mud puddle.
“Robert?”
More hands turned him over and Rory found himself staring up at some familiar faces from his regiment. Tim was there, along with a few of the other soldiers Rory had met on his first day with the Royal Berkshires. They were muddy and bloody and seemingly both relieved and dismayed to see him.
“Were you hit?” asked Tim. “We heard the machine gun.” The young man had a cut on his forehead, staining the right side of his face with blood.
The soldiers helped Rory up into a sitting position. Only his knee hurt, which was good. The entry wound wasn’t obvious. If he had taken some bullets to the chest, then he was sure Tim and the others would have noticed. “I twisted my ankle,” he lied.
Sitting up, he could saw that he had been pulled into the crater of an exploded shell. It wasn’t deep and everyone hunched to keep hidden. For some, it wasn’t that difficult. There were two injured soldiers he hadn’t noticed before and they were laid out on their backs, their legs unavoidably submerged in the water lining the bottom of the crater. One soldier was bleeding heavily from a wound on his upper thigh and the other had shrapnel embedded in his left shoulder. The latter was blissfully unconscious.
Rory stripped off his pack and dug around inside of it for supplies. He tried not to move his injured leg too much, but even the smallest movements sent spikes of pain ripping through his body.
“They have pinned us down,” said one the soldiers. Rory recalled that he had been the one flashing the playing cards at Tim. He was splattered with blood but none of it seemed to be his own. “We used up our supply of grenades trying to take them out and now we can’t run without being shot in the back.”
Without his helmet to protect his head, Rory didn’t even dare to peek over the lip of the crater. No wonder he had been shot. The Germans were picking off anything that moved and from their protected position behind the machine gun they wouldn’t have to worry about a counterattack. The only certain way to stop them was either a frontal assault or a flanking manoeuvre but both options required moving from the crater and anyone who stepped out was putting themselves up for target practice.
Rory focused on helping the wounded instead. He wrapped up the one soldier’s thigh, all the time wishing he had some alcohol on hand to clean and sterilize the gash. For the other soldier, there wasn’t much he could do. He packed bandages around the piece of shrapnel to absorb the blood and to put pressure on the wound, but he didn’t dare pull out the jagged piece of metal. Both men needed further care that he couldn’t provide out in the field.
Staying in the crater wasn’t an option then. Another artillery shell could fall right on top of them while they waited. There was only one solution.
“Between the three of you, can you carry the wounded?” asked Rory.
The uninjured were young and able-bodied. They nodded, though they stared vaguely at him, as if they didn’t quite understand the question.
“Good. When I draw their fire, I want you to run.”
He started to rise up but the soldiers quickly grabbed him and dragged him back down. “Are you mad?” asked one of them. “They will fill you with holes.”
Rory couldn’t argue with that, but he knew he would survive if he was shot. “I’ll be fine.” He handed his pack to Tim.
Tim didn’t take it. Instead he just stared at Rory. The look on his face was the one he usually adopted when he was trying to read someone’s mind. It was a look of deep concentration. It didn’t make sense, though. Why was he trying to read Rory’s mind when he knew it was impossible?
“Tim?”
The young man blinked, like he was waking from a daydream. He picked up his rifle in one hand and removed his helmet with the other. For a moment, Rory thought Tim was going to give the items to him, but then Tim placed his helmet on the tip of the rifle and he raised the gun up until the helmet had just cleared the lip of the crater.
The response was instantaneous. The machine gun barked and a hail of bullets tore through the helmet. When Tim brought his rifle down, the helmet was shredded mess of metal.
Tim tossed the remains to Rory. “It’s all right,” he said reassuringly. “I saw it happen this way.”
Before Rory could even ask what was going on, Tim charged out of the crater.
They were all too stunned to react. Rory and the other soldiers could only gape at the spot where Tim had been sitting only a second ago. This wasn’t right. That should have been Rory charging out of the crater to face the gunfire.
At the thought of gunfire, he stirred from his stupor. Where was the gunfire? The Germans had been quick to take out Tim’s helmet, but there was only silence now. Were they so surprised to see one lone soldier running towards them that they were too dumbfounded to shoot?
He closed his eyes and listened. Amid the overwhelming sounds of battle, he heard it. Cursing in German and the clank of metal. The machine gun was jammed.
Rory opened his eyes. “Go!” he shouted at the other soldiers. They flinched at the harshness of his tone, but they leapt into action nonetheless. In a stroke of genius, the soldier with the injured thigh was thrown over the shoulder of one of the men in a fireman’s carry. He gripped his rifle, covering their retreat from his slung position.
Relieved to see the soldiers on the move, Rory scrambled up the side of the crater, using his good leg to help push him forward. He had just cleared the edge when he saw Tim leap over the wall of sandbags protecting the machine gun. Shots rang out.
He forgot all about the pain in his knee. Panic was one hell of an anaesthetic.
The short sprint from the crater to the machine gun was a blur. If more shells exploded anywhere near Rory, he didn’t remember it. The world only came back into focus when he clumsily vaulted over the wall of sandbags. Even though he tried to land with most of his weight on his good leg, his injured leg still took some of the impact and it immediately seized up and he ended up on his knees. He didn’t have time to moan about the pain. Tim was sprawled on the ground before him, unsettlingly still.
A handful of curses, some in different languages, filled Rory’s head and he crawled forward to see if there was any life left in the young man. His hand was on Tim’s back and he was about to turn him over when he heard a small intake of breath. A small spark of hope flared within Rory. “Tim?”
It was all he managed to say before the guns fired. Shot after shot slammed into his chest, the bullets tearing through his plastic flesh. After six shots, Rory went numb, his brain unwilling to process any more pain. He tumbled back into the sandbag wall, hovering on the edge on consciousness.
The Germans lowered their guns. There were three of them, but with his vision going dark, Rory couldn’t make out their features. They said something to each other and one laughed.
Maybe it was because of his injuries - he had never been this badly hurt before - but as Rory slipped away he felt something inside him take over. A trace of his Auton conditioning, maybe, his default setting. His right hand snapped in half, exposing the gun hidden inside.
The last time he had tried to fight his conditioning, he held out for a bit but he still failed and he had been uninjured then. Rory had no chance to fight his Auton programming this time. His head turned mechanically to face the Germans and he stiffly rose to his feet. The three men suddenly stopped talking.
There was a faint pop and the first soldier went down, a neat hole in his chest. He just started to collapse as Rory shot the second soldier, this time right between the eyes. The third soldier, his eyes wide with fear, fumbled to get this rifle raised.
A small voice in Rory’s head told him that these soldiers deserved this. They had shot Tim and only minutes before they had been trying to kill the other soldiers. This was war and men died. But they didn’t deserve to die like this, not by a gun he had vowed never to use. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t human.
His body moved forward, to shoot the last soldier, and Rory fought with all of his strength to resist. He was a man, not a machine. He had free will; there was nothing external controlling him. His feet lurched to a halt, but his whole body quivered from the effort. “Run!” he screamed at the German soldier.
His point was clear no matter the language. The German dropped his gun and he ran.
The sight of his hand, split in half, filled him with loathing and the rush of emotion helped to focus his will. The urge to chase after the soldier dimmed and more rational thoughts filled his head. Rory collapsed against the machine gun and he lay there for a moment, re-gaining control of himself. The return of his human senses brought back the pain, too. It was like he had electrified barbed wire wrapped around his chest.
As much as he wanted to black out, he couldn’t. He needed to check on Tim. There was the chance he was still alive. He slipped off of the machine gun and dragged himself across the ground over to Tim’s side. With shaking hands, he nudged Tim over onto his back.
The front of Tim’s uniform was dark with blood. Trails of it seeped from bullet holes in his chest and stomach. So much blood. Too much blood. Rory reached out to find a pulse even if it was hopeless.
Impossibly, Tim stirred. He gazed up at Rory, not quite able to focus on him. He coughed weakly, spitting up blood. His lips moved but no words came out. Tim was dying, right before his eyes.
And there was nothing he could do. The weight of the realization hit Rory hard. He hated that useless feeling. It went against everything he had been trained to do as a nurse.
“F-f…i…” Tim struggled to speak, his face twisting with pain. He coughed up more blood.
Rory shook his head. “Don’t-”
With one last burst of strength, Tim leaned up and he whispered into Rory’s ear. “Fire from the sky.”
And then that was it. Tim fell back, his face slack. He was gone.
Tim’s last breath lingered on Rory’s skin. He swallowed heavily, like he was going to be sick, but it only served to aggravate the pain of the wounds in his chest. A fresh wave of agony pulled him down into the waiting darkness. He toppled over, limp as a rag doll, unsure if he would wake again.
“It’s all right. I saw it happen this way.”
“Fire from the sky…”
Rory opened his eyes, Tim’s last words echoing across his memory. Consciousness didn’t creep up on him. He simply awoke and was aware.
He lay on an operating table, bright electric lights shining in his face. The walls of the room were the familiar hollowed rock from the Arras tunnels. He was naked from the waist up and patches of gauze were taped down at various places on his chest. Rory tried to sit up, but a strong hand pushed him back down.
“Easy. You still have some bullets in you.”
He squinted against the glare of the lights. It was Jack, of course.
“What happened?” He pushed Jack’s hand away and tried to sit up again. The man sighed, but this time he helped. Soon enough, Rory sat facing Jack, his legs draped over the side of the table. The right leg of his trousers had been cut away, exposing his knee. The joint still burned, telling him that the bullet hadn’t been removed yet.
“You’re in one of the operating theatres. It took a lot bribing to keep the doctors out. You looked like you were on Death’s doorstep when I got you back here.”
“But how did I get back here?”
Jack was down to his shirt sleeves and his suspenders hung from his waist. His clothes were rumpled and stained with blood, mud, and sweat. “Some of the boys in your battalion found you. You and Tim.”
Rory flinched at the mention of Tim.
“Luckily I ran into them before they made it back to the tunnels,” continued Jack. “I figured you didn’t want a doctor taking a look at you. I had to remove the bullets on my own.”
Rory peeled away one of the patches, revealing a ragged hole. The wound was sealed, the skin melted like wax. There were six patches of gauze on his chest and two more bullet holes in his side that still needed attention.
“What happened out there?” asked Jack. He ducked his head, trying to look Rory in the eye.
Rory fingered the closed wound. “It should have been me,” he muttered. Eight shots to the torso and he was still alive. Suffocation, drowning, stab wounds, falls. He walked away when others didn’t.
Jack placed his hand on Rory’s shoulder. “Hey, look at me,” he said gently. Rory lifted his head, meeting Jack’s blue eyes. He felt like a kid again, brooding over some schoolyard slight while his father tried to cheer him up. He saw the same sympathy in Jack now. “It’s not easy. I know.”
To hear that someone else understood was like opening a flood gate. “Tim charged them. He ran out of the crater where we were hiding without warning. I could have done that. Why didn’t he let me?” The last question was more for himself. It made no sense.
“He didn’t know you couldn’t be hurt. He did what he did to save you.”
“But-” Rory paused and he cast his mind back to the scene in the crater. It’s all right. I saw it happen this way. The words hadn’t made much sense at the time, but the truth was starting to dawn on him. “I think… I think Tim knew he was going to die.”
He felt Jack’s fingers tighten around his shoulder. “You think he saw the future?”
“Could that happen? Tim was just a telepath.”
“It’s rare, but it does happen. Just a flash, like a moment of insight.”
He thought of the way Tim had stared at him in the crater. He hadn’t been trying to read Rory’s mind; he had read the future. “But why did he still charge at the Germans? He could have changed his fate.”
“Maybe he saw more than just his own future.”
Fire from the sky…
Jack pulled out his pocket watch and he frowned when he saw the time. “You need to lie back down. I was promised an hour without questions and you still have three bullets in you.”
“It’s fine.” Rory could extract the rest of the bullets on his own somewhere else. There was a soldier out there who needed this operating theatre more than he did. He hopped down from the table and he immediately lost his footing. Jack had to catch him.
“Down. Don’t make me show off my bondage skills.”
With a groan, Rory crawled back onto the operating table.
They allowed him to return back to England with Tim’s body. He wanted to tell the Latimers first hand that their son was a hero. Before he had left the front lines, the tale of Tim’s bravery had already begun to spread.
When his business was concluded, Rory returned to London. He hadn’t admitted it to Jack, but he was tired. Not physically, but mentally. He went where the battles were, which kept him on the front lines much longer than any soldier was supposed to. The constant danger and death was finally catching up with him.
Rory didn’t have to think hard about where he wanted to go in London. He caught the first cab he saw and directed the driver to the Royal Collection warehouse. No guards greeted him when he arrived and he bet all of them were on the Western Front somewhere. Inside, the warehouse had an air of abandonment to it. The lights were on low and there was a thin layer of dust on the crates.
He passed through the shadows, taking the familiar path to his little den. It was day, but there was a chance that Vastra was around, guarding the Pandorica. She had taken the role very seriously when he had asked her to keep an eye on it.
He took in a sharp breath the moment he laid eyes on the stone box. It was his one constant in his constantly changing life. During those lonely nights in the trenches, he had yearned to talk to it, to tell Amy about his day. Rory reached out now and he placed his hand against the surface. “Hi,” he whispered. “Did you miss me?”
His hand didn’t leave the side of the Pandorica as he walked around it to where he kept his things. The area was devoid of humanoid reptiles armed with katanas. Vastra was probably at home then.
He hated the thought of leaving the Pandorica so soon after seeing it again, but he wouldn’t have much chance to visit Vastra before he shipped back to France. “I’ll be back in a few hours.” Rory patted the box and then he was gone.
In forty years, Vastra’s neighbourhood hadn’t changed much. Gas street lamps had given way to electric street lamps, but it was still elegantly Victorian. In Rory’s day, such houses were prized for their classic charm. He was sure Vastra didn’t care what the outside of her house looked like as long as people left her alone. It was still a relatively easy task these days, but in time it would become harder for the Silurian to stalk through the city unnoticed.
Despite the brighter lights lining the streets, there was still a pool of shadow around Vastra’s front door. Rory had likened the interior of the house as a cave once and it applied to the outside, too. He pushed the button for the doorbell, a modern update Jenny had managed to wrangle out of Vastra, and he felt like was about to go spelunking into the earth.
A few seconds passed and no one answered. Rory rang the bell again, just in case, and he heard it toll deep within the house. Several more seconds passed, but still no one came to greet him. It was just his luck. He chose the one rare day where Vastra and Jenny were out of the house during the daylight. Maybe he would have more luck once night fell. Rory turned and left, headed back towards the sunshine.
In the forty years he had known her, Rory had never seen Vastra outside of her house without a cloak or something to hide her reptilian features. She stepped outside of her house now, showing no concern that she was exposing herself to the world. He started to comment, but the Silurian grabbed him by the arm and yanked him back towards the house before he could form any coherent words.
If he had any joints to dislocate, Vastra would have surely pulled his shoulder from its socket in that moment. Instead, he just grimaced and tried not to trip over his own feet as he kept up with Vastra’s quick pace.
It was only once they were safely back inside, and the door closed and locked behind them, that Rory spoke. “Vastra, ow, slow down. What’s going on?”
She dragged him through the foyer and then up the stairs. “Are you done with battle?” Her words were clipped, at least, more so than usual. She spoke like she had other things on her mind.
“No, I’m on leave for a few days. I just wanted to drop in and see you and Jenny.” Rory paused. “Where is Jenny?” She was the one who always answered the door, out of necessity more than out of duty. The only time Vastra greeted guests was when it couldn’t be helped, like if Jenny was indisposed.
Vastra’s fingers dug into Rory’s forearm and he was very glad that he had no bones to break. “Jenny is ill.” He thought he heard a slight hitch in her voice.
It wasn’t just a cold, not from the way Vastra was acting. It was all Rory needed to hear.
She led him to Jenny’s bedroom. Even from down the hall he heard the painful coughing. It wasn’t just the strained hacking of someone struggling to breathe. No, it sounded wet, like something had settled in the lungs. It made Rory cringe. He didn’t like that sound.
He found Jenny curled up on her side, struggling to take full breaths between bouts of coughing. She had kicked the bed covers aside as her body was racked with painful spasms and though her forehead was covered with sweat she shivered profusely as well. Vastra pushed past him and she went to Jenny’s bedside. She pulled up the covers to Jenny’s chin and tucked in the corners to ensure they would stay in place. There was a gentleness to her movements that Rory had never seen before. He had never pictured Vastra playing nursemaid.
“Has Siobhan taken a look at her?” Technically, Vastra wasn’t a member of Torchwood but Jack had assured her she could call on any of the staff members if she needed. Siobhan Derbyshire was a rarity in this day and age; a female doctor. It was a field still dominated by men, which meant she was the best of the best to get where she was today. Rory trusted her completely.
“I contacted her when Jenny first fell ill. She called the illness influenza and assured me it would pass within a few weeks.” A low, reptilian hiss sounded deep within Vastra’s throat. “The symptoms only grew worse. When Jenny began to have troubles breathing I called Dr. Derbyshire once more. She said the infection had entered Jenny’s bloodstream.”
Rory threw off his great coat and sat down on the edge of the bed. Jenny didn’t stir. Her eyes were squeezed shut and heat radiated from her skin. He only had to put his hand near her forehead to feel it. When he put his ear near her chest, he heard a distinct wet crackle from every area in her lungs. She had lost a lot of weight since he had seen her last, making her resemble the undernourished soldiers he met on the battlefield. Her cheeks were hollow, accenting the sharp angle of her cheek bones, and her skin seemed to sag off her small frame. He brushed aside a strand of brown-grey hair from her face and all he could think of was the young woman he had first met, a wicked knife held in her hand.
“My people could have cured this. We made advances in the field of virology that your medical doctors would not even comprehend. Now the technology sits idle beneath metal tunnels that only serve to move apes from one location to another.”
Rory looked up and saw that Vastra was rigid from all of the tension coursing through her body. “Vastra.” She didn’t respond; all of her attention was on Jenny. “Vastra!”
The Silurian looked up this time, letting out an annoyed hiss. She looked ready to tear into Rory with her bare hands. He inched back just slightly, just in case he had to flee. It took Vastra a full second to regain control of her emotions. “Do something. Your medical knowledge is superior to Derbyshire’s.”
He did have 21st century medical knowledge as his disposal, but it was useless without the right equipment. “It’s sepsis. I don’t have the technology to treat it.” He needed antibiotics and a ventilator, maybe even a dialysis machine, but at this late stage he doubted it would have done much good even if he could magically produce what he needed. Untreated, sepsis led to massive organ failure. “If Siobhan couldn’t do anythin-”
“No.” Vastra’s expression remained hard, but her blue eyes softened as she considered the unspoken reality facing her. Rory wondered if Silurians could cry. “There must be something you have overlooked.”
“There’s nothing I can do.” It took him a few tries to say the words. It wasn’t a phrase he enjoyed saying. No medical professional did. “Vastra, Jenny is going to-”
Vastra rounded around the bed and she had Rory by the front of his uniform before he could react. Her face was twisted into a mask of pure anger. “Do not utter that word.” She shook him hard and his view of the room blurred for a second.
Rory knew this wasn’t personal. Vastra felt powerless and he did, too. They had all of this advanced knowledge between them and it was useless. All they could do was stand by and watch Jenny slowly slip away.
“V-vastra?” Jenny spoke just above a whisper and her teeth clacked together she was shivering so hard. Another bout of vicious coughing soon followed. Vastra let go of Rory and she was at Jenny’s side in an instant. She cupped the woman’s face and the tender touch seemed to help soothe some of the pain.
He suddenly felt like an intruder. This was a personal moment not meant to be shared. He tried to sneak out of the room, but Vastra spoke before he could take a step.
“Stay.” It wasn’t a question. It was a request.
Without hesitation, Rory sat down on the edge of the bed next to Vastra. He wrapped his hand around hers, giving it a reassuring squeeze. She didn’t pull away.
Without any candles or a lantern, it was too dark to read inside the warehouse but Rory held onto a book anyway as he leaned back against the Pandorica. He had read the book a few times now and the pages were dog-eared and the spine was bent out of shape. The famous first line was engrained in his memory, but that had happened long before he had flipped to the first page.
Back in the early days of the dating relationship, Amy had forced Rory to watch the infamous BBC version of Pride and Prejudice. It had felt like a test at the time. A good boyfriend made no complaints. A bad one moaned and ran off to the pub to hang out with his mates. As much as he had wanted to moan, he stuck around. The Austen dialect was a little hard to follow, but for six hours Amy had sat curled up next to him, her head resting on his shoulder. That alone had been worth it. It was that day that he was convinced that they could be more than just friends without it being awkward.
He didn’t have a couch or a DVD player or a TV, but he had the book and he had the memory. Rory closed his eyes and he lost himself to a simpler time.
He tried to anyway. Reality kept butting in. Scenes from the battlefield filled his head. Men covered in blood, screaming out in pain, bodies blown apart by explosions, soldiers dying with their last words on their lips. He saw Tim, shot in the chest, then his parents, his mother bursting into tears while his father cradled her in his arms.
And then it all shifted and he was back at Vastra’s house, watching Jenny slowly pass away. He held a syringe of morphine, now empty, but only seconds before it had contained a dosage for someone double Jenny’s size.
Rory opened his eyes, to escape the memory, but instead of returning to the warehouse, he found himself at Stonehenge, a lifeless Amy held in his arms. Tears he wanted to shed refused to come, a limitation of his plastic form. His grief was real, though, oh so real…
He shook his head in denial and reached out for the lantern that he knew was sitting on the nearby table. He was in a warehouse in London in 1917. That night at Stonehenge was gone and past.
His hand grasped empty air, but a light within the lantern still flared to life. Rory blinked and as the illumination spread he soon saw how this was possible.
“Hey.” Jack, looking every inch the proud soldier in his cleaned and pressed army uniform, smiled down at Rory. He turned up the flame inside of the lantern to the brightest setting, basking Rory’s den with warm light. “Want some company?”
Feeling too emotionally raw to speak, Rory nodded his head. Jack sat down next to him, his great coat spreading out across the floor beneath him. He sat close enough to Rory that their shoulders touched.
“I got your message. I’m sorry to hear about Jenny. How’s Vastra holding up?”
Rory thought of the hole smashed in the wall of Jenny’s room, put there by Vastra’s fist. To say she was coping was the furthest from the truth you could get. “She’s gone. I went by the house and she wasn’t there. She took her swords with her.” That told him everything he needed to know. The katanas were all the company that Vastra wanted right now.
Jack took in a sharp breath. “Remind me to contact the head of Scotland Yard. Something tells me he’s going to find a lot of murdered criminals in the next few days.”
If it was meant as a joke, Rory didn’t laugh. While he was grateful for Jack’s presence he wished for quiet, too. He suddenly yearned for those still nights back at the temple in Rome. Things had been so much easier back then. Just him and the Pandorica, like nothing else existed on Earth. “Maybe she has the right idea,” muttered Rory.
Jack raised an eyebrow. “You’re turning vigilante on me?”
He avoided the captain’s gaze. This wasn’t really a thought he wanted to share with Jack right now. “No, I just… Maybe it’s better to be alone.”
For a moment, Jack just stared at him. “What are you saying?”
Rory drew in a long breath and then he slowly let it out. “I can’t do this anymore, Jack.” He wished for the Doctor’s quick tongue or Amy’s courage, but it was just him and a maelstrom of thoughts that had been haunting him for a while. “This isn’t what I set out to do. You’re the fighter. I’m just… waiting.”
It was always trouble wherever he went and he didn’t have the stomach for it anymore. He just wanted to spend the rest of his days in peace.
“So, you’re breaking up with me?” Jack had a dazzling smile ready to go, but it couldn’t completely hide the hurt in his eyes. This wasn’t a break-up in the traditional sense, but nor was it a mutual split.
Rory managed to find a quick smile despite everything. Leave it to Jack to find the humour and the sadness in a situation. “You’ve got good people working for you. They’ll keep Torchwood going. And you’re so much stronger than I am. You don’t need me, Jack. “
“You’re wrong. I do need you.” Before Rory could argue otherwise, Jack cupped the side of his face and kissed him on the lips. It was a soft kiss, quick but not lacking in any passion.
And then Jack was gone. He got to his feet and he walked away, leaving Rory to sit there, absolutely dumbfounded. It had nothing to do with the fact that Jack was a man. He just hadn’t realized that Jack felt that way about him. Maybe all of that shameless flirting wasn’t so shameless.
Rory suddenly felt selfish for wanting to leave Torchwood. He hadn’t even thought of asking Jack what he wanted.
He smacked the back of his head against the Pandorica a few times, feeling like a right tosser. The pain didn’t make him feel better nor did it make his frustrations go away. He started to get to his feet when he heard a voice, Amy’s voice, at the back of his mind.
Jack’s doing this for you.
Rory plopped back down. If Jack had wanted to talk, he would have stayed. He left to make things easier for Rory. A clean break. If he chased after the captain now, then it would make the gesture meaningless.
This was his choice; the consequences, too. He had to accept it or he would never move forward. Rory stood up and he made his way over to the chest where he kept his belongings. Lifting the lid, he dug around until he found his trusty bronze breastplate. It was time to be the Lone Centurion again.
Rating: PG
Characters: Rory, with appearances from Barbara
Timeline: set between "The Pandorica Opens" and "The Big Bang"
Summary: London, 1996. Barbara Wright prepares the Pandorica for exhibit at the National Museum. As the work unfolds, she recounts the lengthy history of the stone box and its loyal protector, the Lone Centurion.
Disclaimer: Doctor Who belongs to the BBC. Everything else is me taking liberties with history.
A/N: A huge thank you to my beta
punch_kicker15. This story would still be sitting on my hard drive if it weren't for you.1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49
The shell exploded, throwing up debris in all directions. Rory would have thought that there was nothing left to be destroyed in no man’s land but he felt a piece of metal hit him in the back. It was like a light slap to him, but other pieces of jagged metal rained down around him, embedding themselves deep in the mud.
He looked down at Kilburn, who he had been tending. The second he had heard the tell-tale whistle of the shell, Rory had thrown himself over the major to act as a barrier. Beyond the broken leg the man had suffered, he had no other injuries.
“Hang in there.” He went back to work on the splint he had been making out of his and the major’s disassembled rifles and a length of bandage. He didn’t need his gun out here anyway. There was too much carnage and he had no time to think about shooting back.
“I’m fine,” insisted Kilburn, despite wincing as Rory tightened the bandage.
“You’re not. If the doctors don’t set the bone, it won’t heal properly.”
Another shell exploded, but this one further away. The German reinforcements had arrived during the night and the troops in the second and third trenches had been prepared for their attack. They were making it very difficult to make any progress today.
Kilburn gripped Rory’s arm in a vice-like hold. “Leave me. There are others who need your help more.”
He tried to yank his arm free. “The barrage-”
“I can crawl. I’ll manage.” When Rory didn’t move, Kilburn shouted, “That’s an order!”
Rory could have cared less about obeying the chain of command, but Kilburn was right. There were soldiers on the battlefield with worse injuries. It was the basic tenet of triage. The patients worse off were seen to first.
He finished tying the bandage so the splint would hold together. Grabbing his pack, he saluted Kilburn with his free hand. “Yes, sir!” Then he forced himself to his feet and he ran back into the fray.
He had lost track of his regiment not long after they had charged into battle. Seeing Kilburn had caught him completely off guard. Rory would have thought the major would be back with the artillery. Maybe Kilburn couldn’t stand by while the men in his command were mowed down by machine gun fire.
There were craters everywhere, some full of muddy water while others were full of bodies or body parts. Though it was a lost cause, Rory still checked the bodies in the craters. A wounded soldier would be desperate to take cover anywhere, even among the dead. He didn’t recognize any of the faces but that was of a little comfort. One more body meant one less son/brother/husband/father returning home to his loved ones.
Rory was soaked to the bone and probably carrying a few extra pounds of mud on him when the shell hit.
The explosion tossed him sideways and he ended up face down in a pool of mud. He rolled over before he could swallow any of it, but he still got mud in his eyes and up his nose. The sleeve of his uniform was far from clean, but a quick swipe of it over his face got rid of most of the muck. He looked around for his helmet, which had been knocked off of his head, but it was nowhere to be seen.
A few more feet to the right and he might have been caught in the explosion, not thrown aside by the pressure wave. Rory had a brief image of bits of plastic raining down on the ground and he suppressed a shudder. Jack had mentioned that he had survived being blown to bits once and the story had haunted Rory for days on end.
Giving up on his helmet, he got to his feet. There was a slight ringing in his ears from the explosion but he knew it would fade and it did nothing to dampen his heightened hearing. In fact, he didn’t have to concentrate hard to pick up on the sounds of soldiers calling for help.
Rory took off at a run, hoping to reach the soldiers before another barrage began. Bursts of machine gun fire sounded at irregular intervals and while it was hard to place where they were, he kept on the move. It was slow going, though. Running across the mud was like wading across an endless field of dough. The ground gave way with each step, offering no support. It was no wonder why he saw so many twisted ankles and broken legs.
He couldn’t hear the cries for help anymore; it took Rory a second to realize that. Had he gotten turned around?
He was foolish enough to slow down.
The mechanical scream of automatic fire cried out and it was much too close for comfort. Rory thought he could dive to the ground but faster than a speeding bullet he was not. A familiar, fiery pain struck him in the right knee and his leg crumbled from beneath him. No longer able to stay upright, he fell and tumbled.
He crashed along the ground, rolling end over end, catching glimpses of the grey sky and the brown mud. When he finally slowed to a stop, he had the luck to land on his head and stars exploded across his vision. Disoriented and with his knee feeling like someone had jammed a hot poker into the joint, he didn’t put up much of a fight when a pair of strong hands grabbed him around the shoulders and dragged him back.
Rory had a vague notion he was being dragged down an incline and it didn’t matter much until the top of his head was plunged into an icy cold pool of dirty water. The sudden temperature change jolted him awake and he bolted upright. At least, he tried to. The pain in his knee, not content to reside in one part of his leg, raced up the entire limb and he only managed to flop over onto his side before he could have another go with the mud puddle.
“Robert?”
More hands turned him over and Rory found himself staring up at some familiar faces from his regiment. Tim was there, along with a few of the other soldiers Rory had met on his first day with the Royal Berkshires. They were muddy and bloody and seemingly both relieved and dismayed to see him.
“Were you hit?” asked Tim. “We heard the machine gun.” The young man had a cut on his forehead, staining the right side of his face with blood.
The soldiers helped Rory up into a sitting position. Only his knee hurt, which was good. The entry wound wasn’t obvious. If he had taken some bullets to the chest, then he was sure Tim and the others would have noticed. “I twisted my ankle,” he lied.
Sitting up, he could saw that he had been pulled into the crater of an exploded shell. It wasn’t deep and everyone hunched to keep hidden. For some, it wasn’t that difficult. There were two injured soldiers he hadn’t noticed before and they were laid out on their backs, their legs unavoidably submerged in the water lining the bottom of the crater. One soldier was bleeding heavily from a wound on his upper thigh and the other had shrapnel embedded in his left shoulder. The latter was blissfully unconscious.
Rory stripped off his pack and dug around inside of it for supplies. He tried not to move his injured leg too much, but even the smallest movements sent spikes of pain ripping through his body.
“They have pinned us down,” said one the soldiers. Rory recalled that he had been the one flashing the playing cards at Tim. He was splattered with blood but none of it seemed to be his own. “We used up our supply of grenades trying to take them out and now we can’t run without being shot in the back.”
Without his helmet to protect his head, Rory didn’t even dare to peek over the lip of the crater. No wonder he had been shot. The Germans were picking off anything that moved and from their protected position behind the machine gun they wouldn’t have to worry about a counterattack. The only certain way to stop them was either a frontal assault or a flanking manoeuvre but both options required moving from the crater and anyone who stepped out was putting themselves up for target practice.
Rory focused on helping the wounded instead. He wrapped up the one soldier’s thigh, all the time wishing he had some alcohol on hand to clean and sterilize the gash. For the other soldier, there wasn’t much he could do. He packed bandages around the piece of shrapnel to absorb the blood and to put pressure on the wound, but he didn’t dare pull out the jagged piece of metal. Both men needed further care that he couldn’t provide out in the field.
Staying in the crater wasn’t an option then. Another artillery shell could fall right on top of them while they waited. There was only one solution.
“Between the three of you, can you carry the wounded?” asked Rory.
The uninjured were young and able-bodied. They nodded, though they stared vaguely at him, as if they didn’t quite understand the question.
“Good. When I draw their fire, I want you to run.”
He started to rise up but the soldiers quickly grabbed him and dragged him back down. “Are you mad?” asked one of them. “They will fill you with holes.”
Rory couldn’t argue with that, but he knew he would survive if he was shot. “I’ll be fine.” He handed his pack to Tim.
Tim didn’t take it. Instead he just stared at Rory. The look on his face was the one he usually adopted when he was trying to read someone’s mind. It was a look of deep concentration. It didn’t make sense, though. Why was he trying to read Rory’s mind when he knew it was impossible?
“Tim?”
The young man blinked, like he was waking from a daydream. He picked up his rifle in one hand and removed his helmet with the other. For a moment, Rory thought Tim was going to give the items to him, but then Tim placed his helmet on the tip of the rifle and he raised the gun up until the helmet had just cleared the lip of the crater.
The response was instantaneous. The machine gun barked and a hail of bullets tore through the helmet. When Tim brought his rifle down, the helmet was shredded mess of metal.
Tim tossed the remains to Rory. “It’s all right,” he said reassuringly. “I saw it happen this way.”
Before Rory could even ask what was going on, Tim charged out of the crater.
They were all too stunned to react. Rory and the other soldiers could only gape at the spot where Tim had been sitting only a second ago. This wasn’t right. That should have been Rory charging out of the crater to face the gunfire.
At the thought of gunfire, he stirred from his stupor. Where was the gunfire? The Germans had been quick to take out Tim’s helmet, but there was only silence now. Were they so surprised to see one lone soldier running towards them that they were too dumbfounded to shoot?
He closed his eyes and listened. Amid the overwhelming sounds of battle, he heard it. Cursing in German and the clank of metal. The machine gun was jammed.
Rory opened his eyes. “Go!” he shouted at the other soldiers. They flinched at the harshness of his tone, but they leapt into action nonetheless. In a stroke of genius, the soldier with the injured thigh was thrown over the shoulder of one of the men in a fireman’s carry. He gripped his rifle, covering their retreat from his slung position.
Relieved to see the soldiers on the move, Rory scrambled up the side of the crater, using his good leg to help push him forward. He had just cleared the edge when he saw Tim leap over the wall of sandbags protecting the machine gun. Shots rang out.
He forgot all about the pain in his knee. Panic was one hell of an anaesthetic.
The short sprint from the crater to the machine gun was a blur. If more shells exploded anywhere near Rory, he didn’t remember it. The world only came back into focus when he clumsily vaulted over the wall of sandbags. Even though he tried to land with most of his weight on his good leg, his injured leg still took some of the impact and it immediately seized up and he ended up on his knees. He didn’t have time to moan about the pain. Tim was sprawled on the ground before him, unsettlingly still.
A handful of curses, some in different languages, filled Rory’s head and he crawled forward to see if there was any life left in the young man. His hand was on Tim’s back and he was about to turn him over when he heard a small intake of breath. A small spark of hope flared within Rory. “Tim?”
It was all he managed to say before the guns fired. Shot after shot slammed into his chest, the bullets tearing through his plastic flesh. After six shots, Rory went numb, his brain unwilling to process any more pain. He tumbled back into the sandbag wall, hovering on the edge on consciousness.
The Germans lowered their guns. There were three of them, but with his vision going dark, Rory couldn’t make out their features. They said something to each other and one laughed.
Maybe it was because of his injuries - he had never been this badly hurt before - but as Rory slipped away he felt something inside him take over. A trace of his Auton conditioning, maybe, his default setting. His right hand snapped in half, exposing the gun hidden inside.
The last time he had tried to fight his conditioning, he held out for a bit but he still failed and he had been uninjured then. Rory had no chance to fight his Auton programming this time. His head turned mechanically to face the Germans and he stiffly rose to his feet. The three men suddenly stopped talking.
There was a faint pop and the first soldier went down, a neat hole in his chest. He just started to collapse as Rory shot the second soldier, this time right between the eyes. The third soldier, his eyes wide with fear, fumbled to get this rifle raised.
A small voice in Rory’s head told him that these soldiers deserved this. They had shot Tim and only minutes before they had been trying to kill the other soldiers. This was war and men died. But they didn’t deserve to die like this, not by a gun he had vowed never to use. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t human.
His body moved forward, to shoot the last soldier, and Rory fought with all of his strength to resist. He was a man, not a machine. He had free will; there was nothing external controlling him. His feet lurched to a halt, but his whole body quivered from the effort. “Run!” he screamed at the German soldier.
His point was clear no matter the language. The German dropped his gun and he ran.
The sight of his hand, split in half, filled him with loathing and the rush of emotion helped to focus his will. The urge to chase after the soldier dimmed and more rational thoughts filled his head. Rory collapsed against the machine gun and he lay there for a moment, re-gaining control of himself. The return of his human senses brought back the pain, too. It was like he had electrified barbed wire wrapped around his chest.
As much as he wanted to black out, he couldn’t. He needed to check on Tim. There was the chance he was still alive. He slipped off of the machine gun and dragged himself across the ground over to Tim’s side. With shaking hands, he nudged Tim over onto his back.
The front of Tim’s uniform was dark with blood. Trails of it seeped from bullet holes in his chest and stomach. So much blood. Too much blood. Rory reached out to find a pulse even if it was hopeless.
Impossibly, Tim stirred. He gazed up at Rory, not quite able to focus on him. He coughed weakly, spitting up blood. His lips moved but no words came out. Tim was dying, right before his eyes.
And there was nothing he could do. The weight of the realization hit Rory hard. He hated that useless feeling. It went against everything he had been trained to do as a nurse.
“F-f…i…” Tim struggled to speak, his face twisting with pain. He coughed up more blood.
Rory shook his head. “Don’t-”
With one last burst of strength, Tim leaned up and he whispered into Rory’s ear. “Fire from the sky.”
And then that was it. Tim fell back, his face slack. He was gone.
Tim’s last breath lingered on Rory’s skin. He swallowed heavily, like he was going to be sick, but it only served to aggravate the pain of the wounds in his chest. A fresh wave of agony pulled him down into the waiting darkness. He toppled over, limp as a rag doll, unsure if he would wake again.
“It’s all right. I saw it happen this way.”
“Fire from the sky…”
Rory opened his eyes, Tim’s last words echoing across his memory. Consciousness didn’t creep up on him. He simply awoke and was aware.
He lay on an operating table, bright electric lights shining in his face. The walls of the room were the familiar hollowed rock from the Arras tunnels. He was naked from the waist up and patches of gauze were taped down at various places on his chest. Rory tried to sit up, but a strong hand pushed him back down.
“Easy. You still have some bullets in you.”
He squinted against the glare of the lights. It was Jack, of course.
“What happened?” He pushed Jack’s hand away and tried to sit up again. The man sighed, but this time he helped. Soon enough, Rory sat facing Jack, his legs draped over the side of the table. The right leg of his trousers had been cut away, exposing his knee. The joint still burned, telling him that the bullet hadn’t been removed yet.
“You’re in one of the operating theatres. It took a lot bribing to keep the doctors out. You looked like you were on Death’s doorstep when I got you back here.”
“But how did I get back here?”
Jack was down to his shirt sleeves and his suspenders hung from his waist. His clothes were rumpled and stained with blood, mud, and sweat. “Some of the boys in your battalion found you. You and Tim.”
Rory flinched at the mention of Tim.
“Luckily I ran into them before they made it back to the tunnels,” continued Jack. “I figured you didn’t want a doctor taking a look at you. I had to remove the bullets on my own.”
Rory peeled away one of the patches, revealing a ragged hole. The wound was sealed, the skin melted like wax. There were six patches of gauze on his chest and two more bullet holes in his side that still needed attention.
“What happened out there?” asked Jack. He ducked his head, trying to look Rory in the eye.
Rory fingered the closed wound. “It should have been me,” he muttered. Eight shots to the torso and he was still alive. Suffocation, drowning, stab wounds, falls. He walked away when others didn’t.
Jack placed his hand on Rory’s shoulder. “Hey, look at me,” he said gently. Rory lifted his head, meeting Jack’s blue eyes. He felt like a kid again, brooding over some schoolyard slight while his father tried to cheer him up. He saw the same sympathy in Jack now. “It’s not easy. I know.”
To hear that someone else understood was like opening a flood gate. “Tim charged them. He ran out of the crater where we were hiding without warning. I could have done that. Why didn’t he let me?” The last question was more for himself. It made no sense.
“He didn’t know you couldn’t be hurt. He did what he did to save you.”
“But-” Rory paused and he cast his mind back to the scene in the crater. It’s all right. I saw it happen this way. The words hadn’t made much sense at the time, but the truth was starting to dawn on him. “I think… I think Tim knew he was going to die.”
He felt Jack’s fingers tighten around his shoulder. “You think he saw the future?”
“Could that happen? Tim was just a telepath.”
“It’s rare, but it does happen. Just a flash, like a moment of insight.”
He thought of the way Tim had stared at him in the crater. He hadn’t been trying to read Rory’s mind; he had read the future. “But why did he still charge at the Germans? He could have changed his fate.”
“Maybe he saw more than just his own future.”
Fire from the sky…
Jack pulled out his pocket watch and he frowned when he saw the time. “You need to lie back down. I was promised an hour without questions and you still have three bullets in you.”
“It’s fine.” Rory could extract the rest of the bullets on his own somewhere else. There was a soldier out there who needed this operating theatre more than he did. He hopped down from the table and he immediately lost his footing. Jack had to catch him.
“Down. Don’t make me show off my bondage skills.”
With a groan, Rory crawled back onto the operating table.
They allowed him to return back to England with Tim’s body. He wanted to tell the Latimers first hand that their son was a hero. Before he had left the front lines, the tale of Tim’s bravery had already begun to spread.
When his business was concluded, Rory returned to London. He hadn’t admitted it to Jack, but he was tired. Not physically, but mentally. He went where the battles were, which kept him on the front lines much longer than any soldier was supposed to. The constant danger and death was finally catching up with him.
Rory didn’t have to think hard about where he wanted to go in London. He caught the first cab he saw and directed the driver to the Royal Collection warehouse. No guards greeted him when he arrived and he bet all of them were on the Western Front somewhere. Inside, the warehouse had an air of abandonment to it. The lights were on low and there was a thin layer of dust on the crates.
He passed through the shadows, taking the familiar path to his little den. It was day, but there was a chance that Vastra was around, guarding the Pandorica. She had taken the role very seriously when he had asked her to keep an eye on it.
He took in a sharp breath the moment he laid eyes on the stone box. It was his one constant in his constantly changing life. During those lonely nights in the trenches, he had yearned to talk to it, to tell Amy about his day. Rory reached out now and he placed his hand against the surface. “Hi,” he whispered. “Did you miss me?”
His hand didn’t leave the side of the Pandorica as he walked around it to where he kept his things. The area was devoid of humanoid reptiles armed with katanas. Vastra was probably at home then.
He hated the thought of leaving the Pandorica so soon after seeing it again, but he wouldn’t have much chance to visit Vastra before he shipped back to France. “I’ll be back in a few hours.” Rory patted the box and then he was gone.
In forty years, Vastra’s neighbourhood hadn’t changed much. Gas street lamps had given way to electric street lamps, but it was still elegantly Victorian. In Rory’s day, such houses were prized for their classic charm. He was sure Vastra didn’t care what the outside of her house looked like as long as people left her alone. It was still a relatively easy task these days, but in time it would become harder for the Silurian to stalk through the city unnoticed.
Despite the brighter lights lining the streets, there was still a pool of shadow around Vastra’s front door. Rory had likened the interior of the house as a cave once and it applied to the outside, too. He pushed the button for the doorbell, a modern update Jenny had managed to wrangle out of Vastra, and he felt like was about to go spelunking into the earth.
A few seconds passed and no one answered. Rory rang the bell again, just in case, and he heard it toll deep within the house. Several more seconds passed, but still no one came to greet him. It was just his luck. He chose the one rare day where Vastra and Jenny were out of the house during the daylight. Maybe he would have more luck once night fell. Rory turned and left, headed back towards the sunshine.
In the forty years he had known her, Rory had never seen Vastra outside of her house without a cloak or something to hide her reptilian features. She stepped outside of her house now, showing no concern that she was exposing herself to the world. He started to comment, but the Silurian grabbed him by the arm and yanked him back towards the house before he could form any coherent words.
If he had any joints to dislocate, Vastra would have surely pulled his shoulder from its socket in that moment. Instead, he just grimaced and tried not to trip over his own feet as he kept up with Vastra’s quick pace.
It was only once they were safely back inside, and the door closed and locked behind them, that Rory spoke. “Vastra, ow, slow down. What’s going on?”
She dragged him through the foyer and then up the stairs. “Are you done with battle?” Her words were clipped, at least, more so than usual. She spoke like she had other things on her mind.
“No, I’m on leave for a few days. I just wanted to drop in and see you and Jenny.” Rory paused. “Where is Jenny?” She was the one who always answered the door, out of necessity more than out of duty. The only time Vastra greeted guests was when it couldn’t be helped, like if Jenny was indisposed.
Vastra’s fingers dug into Rory’s forearm and he was very glad that he had no bones to break. “Jenny is ill.” He thought he heard a slight hitch in her voice.
It wasn’t just a cold, not from the way Vastra was acting. It was all Rory needed to hear.
She led him to Jenny’s bedroom. Even from down the hall he heard the painful coughing. It wasn’t just the strained hacking of someone struggling to breathe. No, it sounded wet, like something had settled in the lungs. It made Rory cringe. He didn’t like that sound.
He found Jenny curled up on her side, struggling to take full breaths between bouts of coughing. She had kicked the bed covers aside as her body was racked with painful spasms and though her forehead was covered with sweat she shivered profusely as well. Vastra pushed past him and she went to Jenny’s bedside. She pulled up the covers to Jenny’s chin and tucked in the corners to ensure they would stay in place. There was a gentleness to her movements that Rory had never seen before. He had never pictured Vastra playing nursemaid.
“Has Siobhan taken a look at her?” Technically, Vastra wasn’t a member of Torchwood but Jack had assured her she could call on any of the staff members if she needed. Siobhan Derbyshire was a rarity in this day and age; a female doctor. It was a field still dominated by men, which meant she was the best of the best to get where she was today. Rory trusted her completely.
“I contacted her when Jenny first fell ill. She called the illness influenza and assured me it would pass within a few weeks.” A low, reptilian hiss sounded deep within Vastra’s throat. “The symptoms only grew worse. When Jenny began to have troubles breathing I called Dr. Derbyshire once more. She said the infection had entered Jenny’s bloodstream.”
Rory threw off his great coat and sat down on the edge of the bed. Jenny didn’t stir. Her eyes were squeezed shut and heat radiated from her skin. He only had to put his hand near her forehead to feel it. When he put his ear near her chest, he heard a distinct wet crackle from every area in her lungs. She had lost a lot of weight since he had seen her last, making her resemble the undernourished soldiers he met on the battlefield. Her cheeks were hollow, accenting the sharp angle of her cheek bones, and her skin seemed to sag off her small frame. He brushed aside a strand of brown-grey hair from her face and all he could think of was the young woman he had first met, a wicked knife held in her hand.
“My people could have cured this. We made advances in the field of virology that your medical doctors would not even comprehend. Now the technology sits idle beneath metal tunnels that only serve to move apes from one location to another.”
Rory looked up and saw that Vastra was rigid from all of the tension coursing through her body. “Vastra.” She didn’t respond; all of her attention was on Jenny. “Vastra!”
The Silurian looked up this time, letting out an annoyed hiss. She looked ready to tear into Rory with her bare hands. He inched back just slightly, just in case he had to flee. It took Vastra a full second to regain control of her emotions. “Do something. Your medical knowledge is superior to Derbyshire’s.”
He did have 21st century medical knowledge as his disposal, but it was useless without the right equipment. “It’s sepsis. I don’t have the technology to treat it.” He needed antibiotics and a ventilator, maybe even a dialysis machine, but at this late stage he doubted it would have done much good even if he could magically produce what he needed. Untreated, sepsis led to massive organ failure. “If Siobhan couldn’t do anythin-”
“No.” Vastra’s expression remained hard, but her blue eyes softened as she considered the unspoken reality facing her. Rory wondered if Silurians could cry. “There must be something you have overlooked.”
“There’s nothing I can do.” It took him a few tries to say the words. It wasn’t a phrase he enjoyed saying. No medical professional did. “Vastra, Jenny is going to-”
Vastra rounded around the bed and she had Rory by the front of his uniform before he could react. Her face was twisted into a mask of pure anger. “Do not utter that word.” She shook him hard and his view of the room blurred for a second.
Rory knew this wasn’t personal. Vastra felt powerless and he did, too. They had all of this advanced knowledge between them and it was useless. All they could do was stand by and watch Jenny slowly slip away.
“V-vastra?” Jenny spoke just above a whisper and her teeth clacked together she was shivering so hard. Another bout of vicious coughing soon followed. Vastra let go of Rory and she was at Jenny’s side in an instant. She cupped the woman’s face and the tender touch seemed to help soothe some of the pain.
He suddenly felt like an intruder. This was a personal moment not meant to be shared. He tried to sneak out of the room, but Vastra spoke before he could take a step.
“Stay.” It wasn’t a question. It was a request.
Without hesitation, Rory sat down on the edge of the bed next to Vastra. He wrapped his hand around hers, giving it a reassuring squeeze. She didn’t pull away.
Without any candles or a lantern, it was too dark to read inside the warehouse but Rory held onto a book anyway as he leaned back against the Pandorica. He had read the book a few times now and the pages were dog-eared and the spine was bent out of shape. The famous first line was engrained in his memory, but that had happened long before he had flipped to the first page.
Back in the early days of the dating relationship, Amy had forced Rory to watch the infamous BBC version of Pride and Prejudice. It had felt like a test at the time. A good boyfriend made no complaints. A bad one moaned and ran off to the pub to hang out with his mates. As much as he had wanted to moan, he stuck around. The Austen dialect was a little hard to follow, but for six hours Amy had sat curled up next to him, her head resting on his shoulder. That alone had been worth it. It was that day that he was convinced that they could be more than just friends without it being awkward.
He didn’t have a couch or a DVD player or a TV, but he had the book and he had the memory. Rory closed his eyes and he lost himself to a simpler time.
He tried to anyway. Reality kept butting in. Scenes from the battlefield filled his head. Men covered in blood, screaming out in pain, bodies blown apart by explosions, soldiers dying with their last words on their lips. He saw Tim, shot in the chest, then his parents, his mother bursting into tears while his father cradled her in his arms.
And then it all shifted and he was back at Vastra’s house, watching Jenny slowly pass away. He held a syringe of morphine, now empty, but only seconds before it had contained a dosage for someone double Jenny’s size.
Rory opened his eyes, to escape the memory, but instead of returning to the warehouse, he found himself at Stonehenge, a lifeless Amy held in his arms. Tears he wanted to shed refused to come, a limitation of his plastic form. His grief was real, though, oh so real…
He shook his head in denial and reached out for the lantern that he knew was sitting on the nearby table. He was in a warehouse in London in 1917. That night at Stonehenge was gone and past.
His hand grasped empty air, but a light within the lantern still flared to life. Rory blinked and as the illumination spread he soon saw how this was possible.
“Hey.” Jack, looking every inch the proud soldier in his cleaned and pressed army uniform, smiled down at Rory. He turned up the flame inside of the lantern to the brightest setting, basking Rory’s den with warm light. “Want some company?”
Feeling too emotionally raw to speak, Rory nodded his head. Jack sat down next to him, his great coat spreading out across the floor beneath him. He sat close enough to Rory that their shoulders touched.
“I got your message. I’m sorry to hear about Jenny. How’s Vastra holding up?”
Rory thought of the hole smashed in the wall of Jenny’s room, put there by Vastra’s fist. To say she was coping was the furthest from the truth you could get. “She’s gone. I went by the house and she wasn’t there. She took her swords with her.” That told him everything he needed to know. The katanas were all the company that Vastra wanted right now.
Jack took in a sharp breath. “Remind me to contact the head of Scotland Yard. Something tells me he’s going to find a lot of murdered criminals in the next few days.”
If it was meant as a joke, Rory didn’t laugh. While he was grateful for Jack’s presence he wished for quiet, too. He suddenly yearned for those still nights back at the temple in Rome. Things had been so much easier back then. Just him and the Pandorica, like nothing else existed on Earth. “Maybe she has the right idea,” muttered Rory.
Jack raised an eyebrow. “You’re turning vigilante on me?”
He avoided the captain’s gaze. This wasn’t really a thought he wanted to share with Jack right now. “No, I just… Maybe it’s better to be alone.”
For a moment, Jack just stared at him. “What are you saying?”
Rory drew in a long breath and then he slowly let it out. “I can’t do this anymore, Jack.” He wished for the Doctor’s quick tongue or Amy’s courage, but it was just him and a maelstrom of thoughts that had been haunting him for a while. “This isn’t what I set out to do. You’re the fighter. I’m just… waiting.”
It was always trouble wherever he went and he didn’t have the stomach for it anymore. He just wanted to spend the rest of his days in peace.
“So, you’re breaking up with me?” Jack had a dazzling smile ready to go, but it couldn’t completely hide the hurt in his eyes. This wasn’t a break-up in the traditional sense, but nor was it a mutual split.
Rory managed to find a quick smile despite everything. Leave it to Jack to find the humour and the sadness in a situation. “You’ve got good people working for you. They’ll keep Torchwood going. And you’re so much stronger than I am. You don’t need me, Jack. “
“You’re wrong. I do need you.” Before Rory could argue otherwise, Jack cupped the side of his face and kissed him on the lips. It was a soft kiss, quick but not lacking in any passion.
And then Jack was gone. He got to his feet and he walked away, leaving Rory to sit there, absolutely dumbfounded. It had nothing to do with the fact that Jack was a man. He just hadn’t realized that Jack felt that way about him. Maybe all of that shameless flirting wasn’t so shameless.
Rory suddenly felt selfish for wanting to leave Torchwood. He hadn’t even thought of asking Jack what he wanted.
He smacked the back of his head against the Pandorica a few times, feeling like a right tosser. The pain didn’t make him feel better nor did it make his frustrations go away. He started to get to his feet when he heard a voice, Amy’s voice, at the back of his mind.
Jack’s doing this for you.
Rory plopped back down. If Jack had wanted to talk, he would have stayed. He left to make things easier for Rory. A clean break. If he chased after the captain now, then it would make the gesture meaningless.
This was his choice; the consequences, too. He had to accept it or he would never move forward. Rory stood up and he made his way over to the chest where he kept his belongings. Lifting the lid, he dug around until he found his trusty bronze breastplate. It was time to be the Lone Centurion again.
Tags:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-09-27 04:14 pm (UTC)And omg, JENNY...
*Sobs*
no subject
Date: 2013-09-28 09:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-28 09:28 pm (UTC)