Hello again! This is dedicated to all of you who are still interested in this story, and those who have read, favorited, followed or reviewed. Thanks! I hope you like it. I think the next chapter will be the last, though I only have a very vague draft in my head. Anyway, allons-y!
Rory starts to actually, properly worry by the time he catches up with the Doctor, because, although his drunk-giraffe-looking stance might trick people into thinking he could trip over his own shadow (and he would, forty five percent of the time), the Doctor could walk faster than almost anyone he had ever met. The fact that he had managed to get to him before he got to the TARDIS confirmed his suspicions that the Doctor was as far from okay as he could get.
He placed himself in front of the Doctor, facing him, and crossed his arms over his chest. The Doctor stopped a few feet away from him, but showed no interest in looking at him, his gaze firmly glued to the ground. None of them spoke for a while, and the air was so thick with tension that Rory thought there might be a tangible, invisible wall separating them both. Then the Doctor sighed and looked up, his shoulders slumped in defeat, and Rory found himself taking a reflexive step towards the Time Lord, his compassionate nature taking over when he saw the hopeless expression that marred the other man's face. He slowly reached out and grabbed the Doctor lightly by the arm, and when he made no move to jerk back, he wrapped him in a tight hug. He felt the Doctor's body go tense for a split second before relaxing into the embrace.
"You look awful" are the first words to leave his mouth when the hug ends, and the Doctor lets out a mirthless laugh, a brittle, hollow sound that seeps into Rory's bones and makes his very essence shiver.
He almost expects the Doctor's trademark 'I'm okay, I'm the King of Okay' babble, but instead he gets a half-hearted "Well, at least I'm not the one with drool all over their chin, you know" and a mock offended expression which fools neither him nor the Doctor.
"Why?" he asks next, and the Doctor shrugs his right shoulder and looks at him questioningly.
"Why what?" he asks back, trying to feign ignorance and failing miserably, and Rory can't help but roll his eyes, wondering for the hundredth time how this alien (man), whose first rule is 'The Doctor lies' can be such a bad liar sometimes.
"That's not going to work with me, and you know it" he answers, and the Doctor relents, the little fight he might have had left draining out of his body and leaving only tiredness in its wake.
"Why not? There is no point in staying, is there? There are always planets to walk on, civilizations to visit, galaxies to see. I can't stay in one place for too long, you know that, I get all twitchy and humany and the next thing you know I'll be mowing your backyard with the TARDIS parked in your living room" the Doctor answers, and although he had meant it as a joke, a deflection, Rory catches a glimpse of the truth behind his words, his hidden admission that he knew he didn't belong in that part of their lives, and that he understood they had two lives – Doctor life and human life – that, like oil and water, could be shaken around, but not mixed together.
Rory doesn't know what to answer to that, so he changes his approach, writing a mental note to broach the subject later. Taking a closer look at the Doctor, he notices that all the scrapes are scarred over and all the blood is dry except for his left hand, which has been bleeding, though now more sluggishly, since he first saw him.
"What's happened to your hand?" he asks, pointing to it, and the Doctor does his best to clumsily hide it behind his back. When he realizes it's not worked, he mumbles something unintelligible while he looks away, fidgeting a bit in his place.
"Doctor…" he warns, pouring a bit of his inner, authoritative Roman out.
"I might or might not have punched the TARDIS earlier" the Doctor says as fast as he can, and Rory is sure that the noise that comes out of his throat is a mixture between utter disbelief and baffled horror.
"You did what? Why would you do that?"
"She kept getting the date wrong!" the Doctor answers defensively, hanging onto his lame excuse by a thread.
"Yeah, right. Let me see. And give me your handkerchief please."
When the Doctor doesn't move, he sighs and beckons him over.
"If you think either Amy or I would let you simply walk away after bringing Melody back, offering no explanations, not uttering a word and dripping blood all over the place, you are seriously madder than we thought in the first place. What sort of people do you think we are? Do you think we'd actually let our best friend go when he needs us the most? Now come here or you'll have to face the rage of a very angry Scottish woman and the water pistol she uses on the carol singers on Christmas."
Begrudgingly, the Doctor extends his left hand, wincing slightly when he lifts his arm, and takes a polka-dotted handkerchief out of his right trouser pocket.
Silence stretches on while Rory takes a look at the injured hand, which luckily seems to have stopped bleeding almost completely, and he starts dabbing at it lightly with the piece of cloth the Doctor had given him. He hears the Doctor hiss in pain, but no words leave his mouth, and after a few more minutes of silence, Rory can't help but say "You know, I think you haven't been this quiet since that time you got electrocuted and passed out in Venice and we had to drag you to Guido's house."
When that elicits no response, he looks up to the Doctor's face, and sees the Time Lord's gaze is unfocused, looking straight ahead but not seeing him.
He can't tear his gaze from his eyes. Under the dim light pouring from the street lamp above them, he can see an unfathomable darkness pooling in the Doctor's eyes, and he knows that wherever (and whenever) the Doctor is in his head right now, it isn't Leadworth or Venice, and neither Amy nor him are there either.
He stands there, like a deer caught in the headlights, not knowing what to do, while seconds stretch like hours and he is sure that if by any chance the wind stopped, the only sounds he'd hear would be their breaths tangled in the night and the echoes of battle and war and bloodshed that were pouring through the Doctor's mind, threatening to expand and invade everything around them.
Then a gust of wind hits the Doctor in the face, and Rory sees him snap back to the present, his eyes clearing (though not completely, all this time there's always been a thin layer of darkness clinging to them) and he reflexively jerks his hand back, and Rory, caught off guard, lets it slip from his fingers, while the Doctor places his arms in front of his face, hands curled into fists, in both a defensive and an attack stance. Then his gaze focuses on Rory, and he lets his arms fall limply to his sides, clears his throat awkwardly and says a bit hoarsely "You know, I think I can manage on my own on the TARDIS, but thank you."
"You stupid… Am I going to have to speak in Latin to get the message through that thick skull of yours? You. Are. Not. Going. Away. Come on, you can barely stay on your feet, I've seen drunk cats with more coordination than you have right now."
"Have you even stopped to think that maybe I don't want to stay here? That maybe I want to get into my ship and get as far away from you all as soon as I can?" The Doctor snaps, raising his voice, and though those words sting at his core, he refuses to let them be more than an attempt at distraction, like the desperate jab of a cornered, frightened animal.
"No, I haven't, because we both now that's not true. That's the last thing anyone would want to do right now."
"And how would you know?! Eh?! Tell me, how would you know?! He shouts, desperation and a twinge of hopelessness slipping into his voice and turning his accusation into a desperate plea.
"I did my share of waiting, remember? And in two thousands years you see a lot of things. You see empires rise and fall in the blink of an eye, you see people come and go like flecks of dust in a whirlwind, you see battles and wars, self-appointed messiahs and their acolytes and warriors falling bloodied and broken to the ground next to the men they called enemies. And though I'm sure I haven't seen half of the things you've lived, I've seen enough to know that the last thing any living creature in this Universe would want is to be left alone with their demons."
"It's better to see my demons in my nightmares than to have to face them every time I open my eyes. Being with you hurts too much. And I'm too tired to pretend that I'm not hurting anymore."
"And don't Amy, Melody and I get a say in that? Have you even stopped to think that maybe it hurts us to see you leave?" Rory snaps back, quoting the Doctor's previous sentence back to him.
The Doctor stands there, in stunned silence, looking at Rory as if he had grown a second head. That is all the distraction he needs to grab the Doctor's uninjured hand and start to drag him towards his house again. After the few first moments, during which the Doctor lets himself be dragged around, he realizes what's happening and tries to break free, the hint of a protest coming out of his mouth, but Rory's not to be deterred.
"I once dragged the Pandorica out of a warehouse in the middle of the London Blitz, you think I'm not strong enough to overpower an alien who right now seems to weigh minus 20 pounds?"
After a few more tugs, the Doctor finally relents, but Rory doesn't let his hand go, all he does is stop for a moment and wrap one-handedly the handkerchief around the Doctor's hand.
Then they are in his doorstep again, in front of Amy, who mouths Rory a 'Thank you' as she hands him the sleeping Melody (and Rory is surprised that the baby is still so sound asleep, though knowing her mother, it isn't shocking that his daughter sleeps like a log) and then hugs the Doctor so tightly that in the dim light it's hard to tell where his body ends and hers begins.
The Doctor flails his arms for a moment, not really sure what to do with them, until he decides to wrap them tentatively around Amy.
They stay like that for what seems both like seconds and years, and when they separate they silently walk back into the house, Rory closing the front door behind him while Amy walks a subdued and quiet Doctor to their living room, then sits down on the couch next to him. Rory chooses the armchair next to them, and absent-mindedly rocks the sleeping Melody back and forth in his arms. When they are all settled, Amy quietly asks, in a small voice that seems extremely out of place for her "Are you okay?", and maybe it's her tone, the way her Scottish accent seems even more pronounced, the little tremor in her voice she tries to hide, or maybe it's none of those things or all of them mixed together, but the Doctor finds himself unable to lie to her.
"No, I'm not. I- I'm far from okay Amy, and I'm scared, I don't know what to do, and isn't that funny, the great, mighty Doctor, frightened and scared like a child? What have I become? Amy, please, tell me, because I don't know. I don't deserve you or Rory or anyone, when's the last time I did something good for you? When's the last time I didn't actually mess something up?"
"You just brought our daughter back, isn't that 'something good for us'?"
"But she got taken and it was my fault in the first place! She would have been safe if it hadn't been for me. I fixed something I messed up. Can't you see, Amy, all I leave is a trail of destruction behind me. How am I expected to carry on living knowing that?"
Rory opens his mouth, ready to protest, but Amy beats him to it, her voice hard, willing him to understand.
"She wouldn't have been born if it hadn't been for you, for the TARDIS, for that wedding night we had because of you."
"Of course she would have! She would have been born, you two would have got married and would have lived a good life together without having to worry about aliens and space and wars."
"And I would have never saved a space whale from death and torture; I wouldn't have met Winston Churchill, or Vincent Van Gogh. I wouldn't have seen what a far away galaxy looks like; I wouldn't have floated into space. I would have missed so many wonderful things, Doctor. We would have never met you. How do you expect me, us, to give all that up? You don't have the right to make our choices for us. What we choose to do, we do it because we want to, not because you force us to. Remember that. Please, just remember that."
"I try to, I swear I do, but sometimes, it's just too much Amy. I've done so many things I'm ashamed of, so many things I regret, and awful things that I'm ashamed to admit I don't regret at all. I've travelled alone for too long, I've lost that sparkle I once had, I don't know what I'm supposed to do now. I want to stay with you and never let you go and at the same time, every time I look at you I'm reminded of all my flaws and I feel like running off and hiding away and saving you before it's too late. What do I do?" he pleads, and in that moment he looks and sounds like a lost boy, and something breaks inside of them.
"You stay here with us, at least for a while, Doctor." Rory interjects, and when the Doctor opens his mouth to protest, Amy shushes him with a finger on his lips.
"You're exhausted, look awful, are thinner than a broomstick and look like you haven't slept in ages. You aren't going anywhere." Amy says with finality in her voice, shooting him a glare that says 'dare me', and the Doctor can't help but smile.
"There's no getting rid of you both, is there?"
"No" Rory and Amy say smiling at the same time, but then Rory sobers up and places a hand on the Doctor's shoulder.
"You know, you don't have to keep it all bottled up inside. You don't have to carry that burden alone. You can tell us what you want. What you can, whatever it is you feel like sharing. I know you won't tell us everything, and I'm not asking you to. But you need to know that we won't judge you, I promise we will not. You know I can't say everything we've been through has been perfect, but although we have been through bad times, desperate and tired and hopeless, we have also been through extremely good things, we've been happy, we still are, we have enough fantastic memories to last for a lifetime, and it's all thanks to you. So thank you, for everything."
The Doctor smiles gratefully, and he doesn't realize he's crying until Amy gently wipes a tear off his cheek with her thumb.
"Thank you" he says, and then, as an afterthought adds, more to himself than to them
"I might not be okay, but I will be. We will be."