When the Sun Sets ☼ Eleven x Reader

XVII - The Second Rory

Every face in the room dropped as you realised what Stapleton was implying by his statement.

Someone was infected. And if you didn't work out who, you were all in danger.

'Okay, which one of you was it?' the Doctor says, folding his arms across his chest and dragging his words out in exasperation. 'Which one of you touched something you shouldn't have?'

'Well it certainly wasn't me,' Amy replies in a slightly insulted tone, as if she was upset that the Doctor would even insinuate such a thing.

'It wasn't me either,' you add. 'I know better than to drink from unlabelled bottles or touch things that explicitly say 'Do not touch' and the like.'

Rory was staying very quiet at the back of the group. When you turned to face him, you see his head bowed in shame.

'Rory?' you ask, almost knowing what was about to happen. You loved Rory, but his track record when it came to touching things he shouldn't or drinking mysterious liquids was less than perfect.

'If it helps, it was an accident.' he says, looking up into the Doctor's currently emotionless face. It was as if his confusion, disappointment and empathy had all tried to reach his face in unison, and had somehow cancelled each other out.

'I refilled my water bottle on the starliner and forgot about it for a while. I knew there was something off about it when I drank it, but I thought nothing of it.'

'What do you mean you thought nothing of it?' the Doctor sighs. 'If you go on a spaceship and the water tastes funny you should always tell me!'

'Well, funnily enough Doctor, I'd never had space water before. How was I supposed to know it shouldn't taste different to normal water?'

'Because it's water, Rory! Fundamentally oxygen and hydrogen! It's one of the only things that's the same wherever you go.'

The Doctor didn't sound angry, just tired- as if Rory was his two year old son who was having to be told for the fifth time today not to eat a crayon.

'Well, now that we know which of you is infected, we can retrieve the G-627 sample and you can be on your way.' Stapleton says bluntly.

He pushes you and Amy to one side, and grabs Rory forcefully by the forearm and pulls him through a set of double doors on the other side of the room. The Doctor quickly follows after him, closely followed by you and Amy. By the time you catch up to the rest of the group, Rory is already draped limply over a hospital bed, and Doctor Stapleton was hurriedly pulling a surgical mask over his round face. His glasses steamed up a little as he rested them back on top of his nose, and the snap of the latex gloves echoed around the room as he stretched them over his hands.

'It's a relatively simple procedure.' he elaborates, dragging a small rectangle on a metal frame across the room. 'I'll just use this specially designed X-Ray machine to identify the sample, and then take a syringe and extract it. You say you only took a sip of the water?'

Rory barely moved in response, but the same look of guilt is plastered across his face. You give Amy a look, and try to determine whether she had noticed this, and she replies with the same expression. Stapleton, however, seemed blissfully unaware of this and he began lifting the machine so that it hovered above Rory's torso- sort of like a high-tech tray table.

As soon as he did this, the whole screen filled with a dull yellow glow, broken by the skeletal outline of his rib cage.

The reflection of the light in Stapleton's glasses only highlighted his slowly widening eyes as he looked up to the Doctor.

'I've never seen such a large sample, Doctor.' he says, beckoning him over to look at the screen. You all watched as the screen was moved over Rory's body, with the yellow glow flowing through it at an alarming speed.

'It would appear,' Stapleton started, pulling his glasses down and inspecting the machine's image more closely. 'That this form of the miracle fluid has reacted to the cells in his body. I don't even know how he was still standing. We're going to have to perform emergency surgery.'

'What?' Amy says in disbelief. 'All of this for a bit of water?'

'It looks like a bit more than 'a bit of water' now, Pond.' the Doctor says. 'Wow, Rory- how much did you drink?'

'It's a big bottle, okay?' he reasons, and you roll your eyes.

'Why do you look so worried, Doctor Stapleton?' Amy states sceptically, peering at the Doctor's contorting face.

'Well, you see, it's like this. How can I say this in a way you'll understand... yes! Yes, it's- it's like childbirth. You see, in most cases when you deliver a baby, both mother and baby end up alright. However in some cases, one, or both, can pass away due to complications. And here we have ourselves one complicated pregnancy.'

'Are you trying to say Rory's pregnant?' you ask.

'No- but in a very similar situation. There's enough of a sample here to make a whole new human, as the radioactivity team did up north. Only, this will be the idealised version of your husband, Mrs Williams- or what he perceives to be the idealised version of himself.'

'The extraction process.' the Doctor says. 'How will it work?'

'I have no idea.' Stapleton replies. 'It will be new to all of us.'

'Ah, well that's promising.' you mutter. 'How do we know something really bad isn't going to happen?'

'In short,' the Doctor replies, shuffling a little uncomfortably. 'We don't.'

'Great.'

'Don't worry though. We'll take good care of him.' Stapleton smiles.

'Will you though?' Amy interrogates. 'Are you sure?'

'I can assure you, Mrs Williams, I will do everything I can to ensure his safety.'

'Yeah, him and his baby.' you laugh quietly and Rory glares at you.

He breaks eye contact for just a second, but then his eyes widen in a look of slight pain. He rolls quickly back onto the bed fully and begins to shake rapidly in his place. You watch in fascinated horror as his back begins to arch, forcing the X-Ray machine away from the bed and both Doctors away from it. Amy clasps a hand across her mouth in shock, and you pull her close to you comfortingly as a tear falls down her cheek. You whisper comforts to her, though even you weren't sure what would happen. You look to the Doctor for some sort of indicator, but he looks almost as clueless as you.

Then, he stops. Rory falls back down onto the bed without a sound. Amy wrestled with your grasp as she attempted to lunge herself towards the bed, but you held her back.

'Amy stop! I don't think he's finished yet...'

As you say that, a glowing yellow hand reaches up above Rory's own, as if his soul was detaching from his body. The other hand followed, pushing itself up and anchoring the second glowing pair of feet onto the cold hospital floor. As the two connected, the figure began to fill in, now perched on the side of the bed.

There he was, sat next to himself obliviously.

The Second Rory.