This story is weird, and is the one thing I really want clarified about in The Doctor's Wife. So far I seem to be the only one to even think of this as a death, which is odd. Surely there are others who saw this? And, since it happened to be in Rory's POV at the time...it actually happened to him and wasn't in Amy's mind. Spoilers for The Doctor's Wife, and all of series 6 so far for that matter, and a theory on the running 'gag' of Rory dying all the time, because honestly, I don't think it is a joke. And this episode, and The Impossible Astronaut possibly, prove it to not be a joke. Some of Rory's deaths are and should be absolutely impossible to come back from. But he does, in perfect health, in places where he wasn't where he died. Except for the drowning, in which he just...woke up coughing (without, mind you, any water in his lungs...)

Stray

There was something odd going on. Something very odd.

He had frowned when Amy called back to him to say there was something wrong with the lights. The lighting was fine for him. Then he decided it must be House mucking with Amy and turning off the lights in her head.

He had seen something weird, a greenish light glowing from the corridor branching off to one side. He hadn't been able to resist it, he had to go and check it out. He told Amy to stay put, even though she was scared and blind and stumbling in the dark.

He had gone down that corridor, ran into Nephew the Ood and that weird communicator ball thing was raised to his head.

Electricity thrummed through him, shorting out his brain and he knew, he honestly knew, that Nephew in that moment had killed him.

Next minute, he was once again running through the corridors, knowing exactly where Amy was, with Nephew herself now, and he had to save her. He turned the corner, reached out, grabbed her and pulled her away. They turned around and just kept on running.

For a few seconds, he had been both dead and alive. He had been both that body on the floor and the man running to save his wife through the corridors of a possessed spaceship. The dead him had disappeared as soon as he had turned that corner. Just like the body of Idris had disappeared after the TARDIS's soul was released.

It was odd.

But it would explain why he kept having these deaths and coming back even at times when he shouldn't. Why he had become the Lone Centurion, why even after Amy had given up on saving him after he drowned, he managed to come back on his own. Why he could be killed outright and be up and running again the next second. He was sure, absolutely sure he was forgetting a death somewhere, but he couldn't remember it, which made him think the Silence might have gotten to him at some point.

What was he now? Was he still human? Was he dead or alive or both?

And what, if anything, would that do to a child if he happened to have one, if he was able to have one? What would it do to Amy?

One thing he knew for sure. For the universe as a whole, he now felt like a stray. Something that was trying to find his place, but wasn't exactly sure where that should be.

Until he found that out, being with Amy and the Doctor, travelling in the TARDIS, was the best he could do. And he would do it until he had the answer to his question.

Why wouldn't or couldn't the universe let him go?