He's worried about you

SUMMARY:
{On this particular day at the hospital, Rory Williams gets to take care of an unlucky, traveling scientist and his best friend who both had been involved in a life-threatening accident at the quarry. Witnessing the distress of the mysterious traveler over an event that didn't happen, he might be the only one to prevent the stranger from making a mistake he would regret for centuries to come…

This is an alternate version of The Hand Of Fear, episode 1, whereas the TARDIS materialized in 2012 instead of the 70's, and Rory´, who had already been traveling with the Eleventh Doctor by then, gets to take a look into his alien friend's past.}

Also see my author's note at the bottom of the chapter!

It seemed like a busy day at the hospital today. For sure it must have been a while since Rory felt being in such a rush. Although he couldn't really say why he felt this way; No mayor incidents had been reported and it wasn't like people came flooding in with serious injuries either – which, of course, was generally good. He didn't want people to get hurt.

However, there was one funny story Rory had just heard from a colleague who was working down at the emergency reception; Apparently, they had brought in a woman who had gotten herself buried under rocks during a detonation at the Blackpool quarry. The strange thing about this obviously was that, first of all, people don't usually go taking a hike in a quarry during day-to-day operations, but even stranger than that was that – according to Rory's friend – the woman had sustained no lethal or irreversible injuries.

'Must have been very lucky not to get struck by flying debris...', was what the young man thought to himself while he was on the way to see his next patient.

As it would turn out, she had been not be only one to make it out of the quarry with an immense amount of luck...

Now, Rory didn't knew much about the man he was about to meet. All which the chief surgeon had told him when they passed in the hallway was that someone else had come in, and that the man had also been involved in the quarry accident. Seeing how the other one had been brought in by ambulance in a hurry, it seemed like a good idea to run him through a full check-up as well, but the man kept refusing to admit that he might be hurt - which is why the chief surgeon thought that maybe Rory could give it a shot, try to talk some sense into the man. Obviously some people at the hospital thought that the male-nurse was rather good at that sort of thing.

„He's bruised, he's beaten – I'll bet my right kidney if he didn't crack at least one bone!", that or something like it had been the words of the hospital's leading doctor about the patient.

As a caretaker, Rory wasn't officially allowed to diagnose anything, but he believed – as did some of his colleagues, apparently - that he was a good choice when it came to performing first aid. Most likely even more so ever since he have had to use it under the bizarre conditions the Doctor had put him through on their adventures…

As he opened the door to the examination room, Rory quickly found his patient; a man in his early forties, sitting in one of the chairs with his head resting in one hand, eyes closed and sunken in thought – or pain, maybe.

It was rather difficult to tell from one look.

But there was one thing about that man which Rory noted immediately and would go on to remember for a long time afterwards; His rather odd sense of fashion. The man's outfit was dominated by an extraordinarily long scarf which wrapped around his neck once and still fell to the floor. Wearing a thing like that seemed highly impractical and for some reason, the nurse had to think of the man stumbling through rubble and tripping over the scarf's ends over and over again.

And he even might have right been about that assumption. The stranger was covered in light-brown dust, small rips in his clothes from where he must have fallen and his arms, hands and face revealed a greater number of scratches and bruises. All together nothing too serious from the look of it, but more than enough to make you wonder what had happened to him.

„Hello."

Because the patient hadn't noticed him yet, Rory decided to let himself be heard when he stepped in and closed the door behind himself.

The stranger's head shot up almost immediately and before the nurse could have stopped him, he was on his feet. And he was rather tall, too. Rory had to look up a bit to meet his eye. The scarf however, was still long enough to brush the floor even when he was standing…

„Why, hello! It was about time, wasn't it?", he questioned Rory, his booming voice almost as overwhelming as his sudden onslaught of questions. „Are you going to tell me now where they've brought Miss Smith? She isn't in the emergency still, is she?"

„I, uh… Miss Smith?" Slightly confused, the younger man struggled for an answer, but the stranger was incredibly quick to further explain what it is he wanted to know about.

„Yes, Miss Smith. Sarah-Jane Smith. About this tall – dark hair – had an unpleasant encounter with a rockslide."

„Oh! Oh, yes." Of course, that was the woman who had been brought in by ambulance! Naturally, he would be worried about her if they had been involved in the same accident. Rory raised his hands in a gesture to try and calm the man in front of him. „She's out of the emergency ward and in no immediate danger. Actually, I think the doctor's with her just now."

The other one didn't calm down much. All he did was frown at Rory.

„Well, I'd feel much better if that was the case..."

„Ah, yes...?" The nurse wondered about that oddly pronounced statement just a bit before stepping past the tall stranger and offering him to take a seat, again. „Anyway, about you… You've been involved in that encounter with the rockslide, too, haven't you?"

The man with the scarf let out a sigh.

„Yes, but look, I'm fine. Perfectly healthy. I'd very much prefer to see my companion now, if you don't mind."

Giving him a serious look, Rory tried to make him understand that Miss Smith was being taken care of now and that he would better think of his own health for a moment.

„Well, we can still check on her once we are done here. And - excuse me, Sir - but I refuse to believe that not one - but two people made it out of a rock detonation almost unharmed, and these cuts and bruises are telling a different story, anyway."

He nodded towards the man, who only then gave his arms a quick look, before turning back to Rory. „Oh, I've had much worse than this, believe me.", said the stranger with a smirk on his face and then took some steps closer to lean towards the nurse.

„Listen, good man, you don't happen to know a certain Harry Sullivan? He will most certainly vouch for my-"

It was obvious where this sentence was going, so even though Rory did not know a certain Harry Sullivan, he decided to cut him off mid-sentence.

„Alright, alright.", he tried to compromise, and to get some distance back between them at the same time, „I get it, you're feeling well. But I'm not asking much, and I promise it won't take long. Just… let me do my work and let me at least have a look at the superficial injuries. And, if you do start to get a funny feeling later, you can always come back for the full check-up, okay?"

At first, the stranger with the scarf just kept staring at Rory with this wide-eyed look. Maybe a bit puzzled at how he had actually dared to interrupt him just like that. But that stare was making the nurse feel uncomfortable so quickly, that he decided to add another „...Okay? just to break the silence.

„Okay, fine.", the other replied eventually, and, brushing the scarf aside, finally sat back down to the opposite of the table where Rory was standing.

'Stubborn fellow', shot through his head as he also took a seat and sighed - but only mentally, so it wasn't impolite.

Rory pulled a first aid kit and some additional band-aids near and instructed the stranger to lay his arm onto the table. While he began to clean off the dust and tended to the worse kind of scratches, the nurse decided to do some small talk. Most people preferred to have their mind taken off their worries after all, he believed.

„So, then… what's your name?"

„Well, what's yours?", responded the stranger all too quickly.

„I'm Rory Pon-Williams! Rory Williams, yes, that's me.", he corrected himself, all the while wondering what had led him to making such a mistake. Maybe it was because the Doctor always called him and Amy 'The Ponds', and well, even he would admit that the Pond side of their little family was the more… prominent one in their relationship.

The patient raised his eyebrows knowingly.

„Ah… Freshly married, proud husband, I presume?"

Rory couldn't help but smile. „Very much so, yes."

„What's she like? A nice girl?"

„Amy's just wonderful. Although I don't think she would describe herself as a nice girl – she can be pretty rough if she feels like it. But, well, whoever gets it from her usually deserves it and..."

A little taken by surprise, Rory stopped when he suddenly noticed how easily his patient had taken the lead in this conversation and kept him from asking more questions.

„And what?"

„Very clever, Sir." Rory chuckled. "Actually, I wanted to hear from you what had happened in the quarry."

The stranger gave him a confused look. „Quarry? Which quarry?"

„The one you and your companion almost got buried in?"

Rory figured that he was just acting, trying to get him off of this conversation topic, but he wouldn't allow that to happen again. Not as easily, anyway...

„Oh, right. That one. You must excuse me, I've been to quite a few quarries already."

„Traveling much, hm?", wondered the nurse aloud. After all, the other did look a bit like the Bohemian type of person, the kind who could wander the world aimlessly...

„Yes, quite a lot!"

A big ear-to-ear grin appeared on the face of the man with the scarf, before he went on to explain. „You see, we've gotten ourselves lost. It was a case of bad luck to end up in a quarry just before the next detonation. But then again, really, this kind of thing happens a lot to us..."

He pondered a little bit before he corrected himself: „Actually, bad luck had probably little to do with it. It's more like this: We always end up where we should be, but we just never know where this is going to be beforehand, and why." The fact that the man was still smiling made it seem that he didn't mind his 'bad luck' very much.

Funny; Rory found that sounded somewhat familiar to how the Doctor, Amy and he would always end up in trouble together even if they just meant to take a holiday. But that was just him thinking. Of course, the chance that this man, too, had any connection to the Doctor was very slim.

Once he was finished patching up the cuts, Rory began to feel the man's arm for broken bones. Some of the bruises did look rather nasty, and even though his patient tried to keep a straight face, there was little doubt that the touch must have been painful to him. „Does this hurt?", he asked him while he was feeling the lower arm near the wrist and the man winced in pain, responding with a „NO!" so firm that there was no credibility to it…

„Insist on it all you want, but I will put a bandage around it and tell you to keep it still, anyway."

Before he had to hear a word against it, Rory was already applying the medical supplies in question.

„I wouldn't believe the corpus ulnae to be broken; I was barely in reach of that rockslide, anyway.", complained the man and pulled one of his scarf's ends closer to wipe some of the remaining dust off his face.

„Not broken, but cracked or strained, very likely.", Rory responded quickly, before looking up and wondering about the medical term the other had used. „You're not a man of medicine, too, are you?"

There was again that big, crazy smile appearing on the strangers face, giving away just how much he enjoyed to keep his secrets. „Oh no, I'm not A doctor, I'm just THE-"

With a near perfect timing, one of Rory's colleagues tore the door open – no knock or anything to warn of the sudden intruder.

„The report on Miss Sarah-Jane Smith is finished, you can visit her now. She's at the west wing, room 254.", he announced to both Rory and the stranger before heading off again almost immediately.

Nurse Williams struggled to finish the bandaging of the wrist before his patient was up and about again, ready to leave the examination room - and now, with that kind of information, Rory knew there was very little he could do to stop him from it.

„Thank you very much for your concern, Mr. Williams, I'll be going then to see my companion." Just as expected, the stranger with the scarf was marching out the door before he had gotten any chance to hold him back. But still, Rory didn't intend to let him off the hook so easily.

„Wait! I'll be coming with you!", he shouted after him just as the door fell into its lock...

Rory stopped short in his pursuit, thinking that the man had already been off, but then the door opened again – just enough for the stranger to peek through once more.

„Come on, then!", he commanded – and Rory hurried to catch up.

I realized too late that with Rory being River's Dad and all that he would most likely know about regeneration, and that would make this entire set-up impossible. At the time I wrote this (my first English fanfiction, by the way) I liked the idea so much, however, that I accepted the risk of possibly getting facts about Rory and/or the Eleventh Doctor wrong. I knew some bits from having seen single episodes of season 5 and 6, and the beginning of season 7, and hoped that it would be sufficient.

The whole story basically foots on two thoughts I had when watching 'The Hand of Fear' for the first time. One was that the story could have been set in any decade, because they never gave the year they arrived in, UNIT was not involved and it didn't matter as much anyway. The seconds thought was that Sarah had probably never been in more danger, with her almost being crushed/buried alive, then possessed and being poisoned by radiation, too. It led me to believe that the Doctor had a good reason to let her go, because had he not, he could as well have ignored the "no-humans-on-Gallifrey" rule as it was done with Leela later.

Last, but not least: This story wasn't written to extend on the relationship of Four and Sarah in a romantic way, but if you already have a shipping in mind, it probably works for you, too.