Let's Hear It for the Boy
By gertie_flirty
Summary: Written for echaperouge at the Rewrite History meme over on fictorium. Prompt was "The Doctor meets young Rory instead."
Spoilers: Up to "The Eleventh Hour"
~~x.~~x.~~x.~~x.~~x.~~x.
He is a very quiet boy. Polite, well-natured, but very quiet. He has trouble voicing his opinions, and he stutters a bit. His mum worries he's not assertive enough.
However, he is very content with his life. It's only him and his mother in the house, though it seems a bit big. His mum works two jobs, and when she is home, she sleeps, and he is quiet so as not to wake her. But he likes his house, and his mum, and his village, and even that bossy Scottish girl who lives down the way. He has a few toys, and a GameBoy, and is good at school. He's clever, more so than he gives himself credit for.
He's not sure what he wants to be when he grows up; maybe a doctor.
The night that it happens is very dark, and very still, and very quiet. "A bit of an insomniac," he had heard his mum say over the phone. He asked her what it meant; it meant he didn't sleep.
He did sleep, sometimes. Just not the way he was supposed to. Since he was quiet, and didn't fall asleep in school, his mum didn't worry about it too much.
So he's awake that night when it happens, though later he doubts he could have slept through such a noise. It's a miracle his mum didn't wake up, but she's always so tired.
There's a crash, and a flash that lights up the whole house, and he looks out the window and there seems to be a rather large blue box in the middle of the garden.
He wonders if he should wake up his mother, but he decides not to; she needs her sleep. He grabs a torch instead, slipping on his trainers without putting on socks first and creeps outside.
The box is big, the size of a small shed, and seems to be laying on its side. It is also very, very blue. Smoke curls up from the crater it has made in the ground, and he keeps his distance, afraid the whole thing might explode.
The top of the box bursts open, revealing a bright glowing light. A metal claw attached to a climbing rope flies upward and out, hitching on the edge of the box. There are rustling noises, and at last a man's head appears above the blue rim.
"Hello!"
"Er—"
The man hops up and out of the box in one go. He is young, but dirty, his shirt hanging half out of his trousers, shredded in parts. "I'm the Doctor. What's your name?"
The boy has trouble forming his lips around the syllables. This should be easy enough to say; it's his own name after all.
"Rory."
"Hello, Rory. I'm the Doctor."
"You, er, said that—"
"Right. Well, don't go wandering off, and don't ask any stupid questions. Now!" The Doctor turns around and waves something at the box, and Rory hears a slight buzzing noise. There is a sputtering, and the Doctor frowns, slamming his hand against the box. The doors on the top slam shut, and the Doctor steps back and smiles.
"Well, young Rory, I am peckish. Do you have any food?"
"Er, in the kitchen—"
"Lead the way!"
Rory reluctantly lets the Doctor into his house. There's something he's supposed to know, about not talking to strangers, and certainly about not letting them in the house, but the Doctor seems so unusual that even regular strangers would find him a bit off.
The doctor immediately starts rummaging through the fridge, tossing about ingredients as he makes various comments on them. Rory wants to protest, but all he can do is stand in the kitchen doorway, fidgeting.
"Young Rory, why don't you come in here and join me?"
"I—" Rory twists the torch in his hands and stares at his feet. "I don't like the kitchen. It's weird in there."
The Doctor pauses at this, and stands up completely straight. "Weird?" He peers closely at Rory, studying him as if he were a lab experiment. Suddenly, he grins. "Perfect!"
The Doctor frantically starts shoving appliances off the counter, the toaster falling to the ground with a crash.
"Careful, my mum'll wake up—"
"Tsk, tsk, young Rory, there's weirdness afoot!" The Doctor returns to the fridge and stands in front of it for a moment, simply staring. In one large heave, he shoves the whole thing slightly to the left. "Aha!"
And there, where Rory's refrigerator once was, is a wall. A dingy, dusty, in need of a fresh coat of paint wall, but a wall nonetheless.
It also has a very large, distinct crack in it.
"Oh my," the Doctor says, "This is weird."
Rory watches as the Doctor presses his ear to the wall, tracing his fingers along the jagged line of the crack, and mumbles something about space and time and meetings. Rory is not very interested in this, but he does notice the crack is glowing slightly.
"Doctor—"
"Yes, Rory, I see the mystical glowing." The Doctor stands back, then points something at the wall. The crack opens wide, and seems to be filled with the image of a giant eyeball darting back and forth.
"PRISONER ZERO HAS ESCAPED."
The Doctor shouts something at the eye, but it only repeats the message about Prisoner Zero. The Doctor manages to shut the crack again, then looks at Rory.
Rory looks at the Doctor.
"Give me five minutes." The Doctor runs outside, where the blue box is now standing on its end. Rory now recognizes it as an old police box; they have one in the village that's defunct, but his mum told him all about how they used to work.
"Five minutes?" cries Rory. He is a small boy, and he can never make his voice as large as he wants it to be. "Five minutes for what?"
"This," the Doctor pats the blue box, "Is a time machine. I will leave in it, and return in five minutes."
"But what about the eye thing in my wall?"
"That's what I need the five minutes for."
"And the food!"
"Food?"
"All the food you ate and threw around. My mum paid for that!" Rory looks surprised at his own outburst, and backs down quickly. "She—she works hard, y'know."
The Doctor raises an eyebrow. "Yes. I'm sure. Say, Rory," the Doctor drops to one knee and looks Rory in the eye. "When I come back, do you want to come with me? Travel the stars, see all of space and time?"
Rory looks back at him, wide-eyed, believing the Doctor actually could take him away from everything.
"No," says Rory. "I like my mum and my house and my friend Amelia and I don't want to leave them."
The Doctor looks surprised for only a second, then smiles. "I like you, young Rory. Now, off I go! Five minutes! I promise! I'll bring your mum some food!"
And the Doctor is gone, inside the box, which disappears with a vworp vworp vworp sound.
Rory sighs, not believing for a second the Doctor will ever come back. He forces himself to go back inside, and more importantly, into the kitchen. He cleans up the mess easily enough, but moving the refrigerator back into place is nearly impossible. He heaves his little seven year old body against it, inching it slowly but surely back against the dingy wall to hide that terrible crack.
When he finally does go to sleep, he sleeps for ten hours straight. His mother worries a little at first, but he never suffers from insomnia again.
~~x.~~x.~~x.~~x.~~x.~~x.~~x.~~x.~~x.~~x.~~x.
Years pass.
Rory never tells anyone about the Doctor, except Amelia. Amelia takes him completely seriously, and wholeheartedly believes his story. She never laughs at him, not once.
When they are twelve, she cuts her long red hair and dyes it blue during summer holidays and starts calling herself Amy, saying Amelia is an old lady's name. Rory disagrees, since he's always thought of it as something out of a fairy tale, but boys aren't supposed to like fairy tales.
She tires of the blue hair, but not of the name Amy, and she makes him her boyfriend sometime when they are fourteen. He wonders if he is like the blue hair, or like the name change.
He decides he isn't clever or dedicated enough to become a doctor, so he attends nursing school instead. Part of his subconscious tells him he also never wants to be called "Doctor."
Amy blows off uni completely, it is not for her. She is wickedly clever, and aces school with no trouble, but she attends only as long as she has to. So she decides to spend her early adult years as a Kiss-O-Gram, and Rory has to admit he likes the costumes.
He likes being a nurse. He likes taking care of people, he likes the flow of the hospital.
Until something weird happens.
He's assigned to the coma ward, which is easy stuff, mostly. Change a few bedpans, switch a few bags, all's well and good.
Then he starts seeing the patients. Outside. Walking around. When they're supposed to be in the hospital.
It frightens him. He's inexplicably reminded of the crack in his kitchen wall.
The doctors think he's bonkers. Amy wants to believe him, but even she finds it difficult.
So he takes pictures. Constantly has his phone in camera mode. At the ready.
The doctors don't want to look. Amy tells him, yeah, it's weird, but what can we do?
Nothing, he says. Nothing.
~~x.~~x.~~x.~~x.~~x.~~x.~~x.~~x.~~x.
It happens again, at night. Only not a crash, but that vworp vworp vworp sound.
Rory, who has not suffered from insomnia in over twelve years, is wide awake this night. Or very early morning. And he hears that noise, that blue box noise, and runs outside without even thinking.
The doors to the blue box open, and there's the Doctor, looking exactly the same, smudges and dirt and ripped fabric all in the same places.
"Hello!" says the Doctor.
"Hello."
"I'm the Doctor!"
"Yes, I know."
"Oh, well, then. I'm looking for a young boy named Rory." The Doctor cranes his neck and looks about. "He lives in that house, there."
"I'm—" Rory feels exasperated. More exasperated at the doctors at his hospital not believing what he says when he has concrete proof. Even more exasperated then when Amy calls him at nearly midnight crying about a repeat of Hollyoaks she just watched. "I'M RORY!"
The volume of this statement seems to impress the Doctor. "Really? Damn, I overshot it by, what, fifteen years?"
"Twelve."
"Ah. Yes. Sorry about that. Now, about that crack in your wall—"
"Doctor—" Rory calls after him as he begins to wander towards the house. "It's—there's something else."
Rory takes the Doctor inside, shows him the pictures on his phone.
The Doctor has a similar serious expression to Amy's. And then the Doctor asks him something:
"Rory, where's your dad?"
"My . . . dad?"
"Are your parents divorced? Did he walk out? Where is he?"
"I . . . don't know."
"Do you have a little brother? A little sister?"
". . . no . . ."
The answer comes so slowly. Rory is sure he has no younger siblings. No father. However, there is the faintest image in his mind, like that of a pencil drawing that has just been erased. A man tossing a young girl in the air playfully. Just that soft impression, fleeting and odd.
Then the Doctor points out a room to him, a room he never knew existed. An extra bedroom in his house.
And then all hell breaks loose.
~~x.~~x.~~x.~~x.~~x.~~x.
There are aliens, and threats upon the earth, and running, and crashing, and psychic impressions and holograms, and spaceships, and somewhere the Doctor gets a bowtie.
And he promises Rory and Amy, really promises, really and truly and honestly, he'll be right back this time, just a quick hop to the moon.
After he leaves, Rory proposes to Amy on the spot.
He can't believe it when she says yes.
~~x.~~x.~~x.~~x.~~x.~~x.
The Doctor shows up, two years later, once again thinking he's only been gone five minutes.
"Well," says the Doctor, looking at the two of them, "Would you like to come with me?"
Rory looks at Amy. She has hungry, pleading eyes. She was always the adventurous one. The one who wanted to climb trees and swim in rivers and go driving as fast as she possibly could. The one who was always looking up at the sky, hoping there was something out there.
Rory was not. He loved his house, and his mum, and his village. He was a calm, practical, quiet young man who was content with his life.
And they were getting married tomorrow.
Rory turns to the Doctor.
"Sure," he says. "We'd love to."
~~x.~~x.~~x.~~x.~~x.~~x.
END
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