Author's note: Written during a multi-fandom fic tree with Iawen Londea, using the phrase "felt real enough, as though flesh and bone" from her Star Wars fic. Set during The Big Bang, series 5, episode 13. Inspiration from Philip K. Dick, for the title and concept.
His body felt real enough, as though flesh and bone hadn't been replaced with plastic. But it did not function the same.
The night after the Doctor left, Rory sat alone in front of the Pandorica. He waited for fatigue to steal into his thoughts. For his eyes to grow heavy. He'd been running on adrenaline for hours, but that had to run out eventually. Didn't it?
But sleep never came; his plastic body didn't require it.
Then Rory began to wonder what else was different. Over the first week, he experimented, testing the limits of his existence. He did not need to eat. Curious, he tried and found he could swallow down food. But the idea of what his body might be doing to process it made him feel ill. Rory did not try again. Without hunger to drive him, the process seemed rather revolting.
In the second week, it occurred to him that hunger might not be the only drive missing. Could he still feel desire? He stood and pressed the palm of his hand to the box. Ignoring the cold stone, he closed his eyes and thought of her on the other side. Only a few meters of stone separated them, and he remembered the warmth of her skin on his fingertips. With relief, he found that he could.
But could he act on them?
Rory jerked his hand back from the box as his eyes snapped open. The question terrified him, for what if the answer was no? He wasn't a man anymore. Had that most basic function of a man had been taken from him too? Rory would wait for her, through all the thousands of years ahead of him. However long it took. But at the end, would he be enough?
He could find out. He could let his hand slide down, here in front of her box, and find out. The thought of it made him flush, as embarrassed and shamed as he'd been in junior high. He glanced guiltily around the cavern, but of course there was no one to see.
He couldn't do it. Whatever else this plastic body was capable of, he still had his memories. The remembered touch of her warm freckled skin meant more to him than anything in this cold, lonely tomb ever could. He'd live off the memory of her, rather than risk tainting it.
Because, in the end, that didn't matter. He could still love. And so he would wait, and pray that whatever he'd become, it would still be enough.
