All of time and space at the push of a button, mental. A whole world inside a phone box, absurd. His fiancée kissing the Doctor...well, that one wasn't so hard to believe.

Venice had been beautiful, beautiful and deadly. He'd fought vampires, no. Alien fish that looked like vampires. Alien fish that looked like vampires that had escaped from their home world through a crack in time and space. Mental, bloody mental.

Before all this madness, he'd been at his stag do, celebrating. Well that had been ruined. The Doctor had stumbled in, out of nowhere like he always did, and told him his fiancée had kissed him. Kissed. Him. Then he'd thrown him into his absurd little box and told him that he was taking them to Venice for a date. A date of all things. He didn't want a date. He wanted to find out why his fiancée, his lovely Amy Pond, had gone off with the man who'd ruined her childhood on the night of their wedding and then kissed him. That was what he wanted, not a stupid date.

Though Venice was beautiful. So beautiful that he couldn't even stay mad at the Doctor for very long. Canals and streets filled with life, like something out of a fairytale. He'd held hands with Amy, walked and talked. He'd asked her had she missed him. She'd been shifty about it. He wasn't even that surprised to be honest. All of time and space, a big blue box that could send you spiralling into the darkest depths of the universe, his first thought wouldn't have been of Leadworth either. But he liked to think Amy would have been. But he'd grinned and bared it like he always did. He wasn't a jealous man – his fiancée was a kiss-o-gram for god's sake. You couldn't be a jealous man when your other half had a job like that. But he wasn't jealous of the clients Amy visited. It was a kiss, a little kiss that meant nothing, that would never go anywhere. With the Doctor...he felt burning inside him, it tugged and tore at him, seethed and soared in his stomach. When he kissed Amy, he felt stars burst inside him and fireworks fizz inside his brain. He wondered if the Doctor felt the same thing. The Doctor had everything, even his lovely Amy Pond.

She didn't let him call her Amelia, she glared and hit and raged whenever he even dared to call her Amelia. He'd heard the Doctor call her Amelia though, loads of times. That hurt more than finding out he'd kissed her. He wasn't even sure the Doctor liked him. He wasn't good looking like Jeff, wasn't brave like Amy. The only reason he was bringing him along was to keep Amy from kissing him. If he wasn't so keen on getting married, he might have left them to it.

But they were in Venice and there were alien fish trying to kill them, there just wasn't time to ponder on the detailed aspects of his relationship. Hm. Some date.

He'd asked Amy if this was how it always was, she'd answered 'yes, yes it was'. That didn't fill him with too much joy. When he'd imagined time travel as a child, he'd always thought of quaint days out, admiring the sights and scenes, talking to the locals – like a picture from a book. Not bloody alien fish. Then he had to sigh and remind himself; life wasn't like a fairytale.

He'd seen people die, people sucked to death, corpses lining the streets, men blown up in their own homes. It made him sick, made him shiver and sweat. But what made him feel sicker was the fact that Amy (his lovely little Amy) and the Doctor didn't even seem to care. They just walked on by the bodies like it was nothing. Well, okay, that wasn't fair. The Doctor had cared when the house had blown up and when he found out that the alien fish had drowned Isabella. He'd cared for a few moments, cared then moved on. But Amy, Amy hadn't even blinked. He didn't like what he saw. Amy had once been a girl who'd been unable to pass a homeless man in the street without emptying her purse for him. A girl who'd brought home cats and birds with broken legs and made them better using her pretend doctor's kit. Now she was a girl who was walking by dead bodies without batting an eyelid. He wanted to scream, rant and rave, it wasn't right.

A police box wasn't supposed to be bigger on the inside, fish aren't supposed to kill you, your fiancée isn't supposed to go off with a man with two hearts on the night of her wedding and then kiss him. He knew they didn't understand. Amy just rolled her eyes when he voiced his opinion on how mad it all was, the Doctor just continued flicking taps and twisting bottle caps. But he was Rory. He was the one who just got along and dealt with everything, made it better. He'd been the one who'd helped Amy when the Doctor hadn't been there. He'd looked after her for fourteen years, what had the Doctor done? Visited, disappeared, visited again, gone off again then popped back to take her to planets and time periods where everything seemed to want to kill her.

Madness.

Life was supposed to be simple. You were born, you mucked about with work and life for a couple of years, then you died. That was how it worked, pretty simple formula. It'd worked for, oh, millions of years. Nowhere in the formula did it say 'let a mad man with a box from another planet take your fiancée away and show her the stars'. Maybe he was being selfish, but he felt he had a right to be. Once the Doctor left, once Amy was thrown back into Leadworth, who'd be the one picking up the pieces once more? That's right. Him. Rory Williams. The doctor-turned-nurse. Amy tried to deny it, said the Doctor would be there forever. But he could see it in the Doctor's eyes, see how they burned with memories and hurt. There'd been others, others just like his lovely Amy. Other men and woman with the same dreams, the same aspirations, the same hope of staying with the Doctor forever. But Amy wouldn't listen, Amy never listened. Amy didn't even listen to the Doctor. So he'd wait, wait and look after her. Travel with them and attempt to knock some sense into the both of them before something bad happened. Because that was what he did, that was who he was.

He was Rory Williams, the man who'd never been good enough, the man who was always left to pick up the pieces.

That was who he was and that was all he'd ever be to Amy Pond.

ILRory. Really love him. Life just had to suck for him. Always compared to the Doctor with Amy, made to dress up as him, failed his doctors exam and was forced to be a nurse, never good enough. The fandom needs moar Rory. Lots more.