Rory took the beer that Shaun offered him and threw himself onto the couch. "So, they said that you couldn't come with them, either? It isn't just me?"
"Not at all," Mickey said, laughing. "They've got their thing going on. Besides, we aren't the real problem—the Doctor keeps following them around, trying to get them to come with him. But they don't want to."
"So... Rose, the blonde, her and the Doctor are..."
"Yeah," Mickey agreed. "Or, they were. Then he dropped her off in a parallel universe with his clone and left them to grow old together—they were married, they had children. Rose is actually way older than any of us. She died of old age, and then woke up in the morgue looking like she was twenty again, so she came back here."
"And she picked up Martha and Donna, and they took off. Then they asked if Amy wanted to come with them—it amuses them to see the Doctor scrambling all over himself," Shaun added.
"And he used to travel with Martha, Rose and Donna before he travelled with Amy?" Rory clarified, feeling much better about his wife running off with three strange women then he had been before.
"Yep! So did I," Mickey said. "Funny story, actually—Rose and I used to date, but then she met the Doctor and he whisked her off to see the universe. It sort of broke us up. But then they invited me to come along, but we accidentally landed in a parallel universe, and my gran was still alive there, so I decided to stay. Rose got trapped by accident a little bit later, and while she and I were working out a way to breach the walls and get back, he had met Martha and was travelling with her.
"Then Martha left him, around about the time that Rose and I finally managed to get the dimension cannon to work, and he travelled with Donna while we tried to find him. Then we finally did find him, and Donna accidentally created his half-human clone, and he had to erase her memories because his Time Lord consciousness was killing her. He put Rose and the clone back into the parallel world to grow old together. They did, but then Rose woke up from being dead all young again, jumped universes and came to find me and Martha, and it turned out that Rose still controlled enough of the Time Vortex—long story—to allow Donna to have her memories and Time Lord consciousness without dying."
"Then they found that other TARDIS, and took off. They invited Amy to go with them, and I don't know when she took him up on it," Shaun added.
"But... don't you miss them?"
"Well... yeah," Mickey said. "Course I miss Martha. But TARDIS travel—it isn't really for me. Tried it—it's exciting, and all, but I've got much more appreciation for the match and a good pint. Martha can save the universe—it couldn't be in better hands. I'm here waiting for when she's done with travel and wants to settle down. It's not like they never visit."
Rory nodded. That was surprisingly sound logic. Amy had always wanted to travel the universe with her Raggedy Man, and Rory wasn't so much uncomfortable with Amy being gone as uncomfortable with Amy being alone on a spaceship with the Doctor.
...
Rory sat down at the table that Mickey and Shaun had claimed at the pub and took a long chug of beer. It had been a very long day at the hospital, and he just needed to unwind. He missed Amy, and he worried about her, and he knew that Mickey and Shaun worried about Martha and Donna too, and of course Mickey worried about Rose as well, even though, in Mickey's own words, Rose could disintegrate an entire planet—she didn't exactly need to be worried about.
The Doctor had dropped by Rory's place quite a few times in the past couple of weeks—he seemed sort of forlorn, and lost with the idea that Rose could choose to go in a different direction, even if the separation was truly only temporary. It felt good to meet at the pub with people who understood how he felt about Amy being gone and have a few drinks.
Even though his co-workers accused them of being girly.
So, in my headcanon that goes with The Universe and Everything Out There, Rory, Mickey and Shaun meet once a month to drink and mope drunkenly about their wives being gone. Martha, Donna and Amy are very amused. The Doctor is always invited, but he's too busy trying to follow the girls around to take them up on it, but sometimes Jack joins them and they TP the TARDIS when they're really drunk.
