broken little soldiers

The Doctor sucked in his breath harshly before releasing an unsteady sigh. He felt ill. His body ached; it throbbed all over like it does when you're sick. His head didn't feel any better, but he was used to that thrumming sensation that was with him always. What bothered him now was the sharp pain behind his eyes, accompanying his everpresent headache. He sat up, slowly, and rubbed his tired eyes. His elbows were on his knees, right on top of the healing bruises he got when he fell over right a few moments ago.

He had been sleeping - or least trying to. Naturally, Time Lords needed much less than humans due to their wonderfully superior biology, although they had all the time in the world. However, closing his eyes for even an hour was an exhaustive, if not impossible, feat. He had had bad dreams for a long time, ever since the Time War, but they had gotten worse. They were violent now, to him physically.

They had stopped being bad dreams and turned into a nightmarish circus that plagued him every night. His head was filled with images of his life, but demented and twisted, like fun house mirrors. Everything was dark and monotoned, except for the reds - those were bright and shiny like lacquered rubies. Everything swirled and turned and danced around, a whirlwind of black-and-white horrors. His family, his friends, his memories - deformed with masks of monsters. Everything laughed and cried and had razor sharp teeth, dripping with that sun-kissed red. What was only an hour felt like an eternity in those dreams. The Doctor would wake up screaming, gasping for air because they always seemed to end the same now - him drowning in blood.

Tonight he was trapped in a version of the Ponds' wedding. He showed up like he had before - Amy remembered him and the TARDIS and he materialized right in the middle of her reception. But when he came out to see what he had thought was Amy's smiling face, he only saw carnage. Amy was waiting for him, but her pretty, white dress was stained and torn, like she walked through a valley razor blades. Like everybody else, she wore a mask with this indescribable face on it - it had no eyes for they were covered by a blood-stained clothe. The mask was painted with horizontal, black-and-white stripes and had a grinning mouth, overflowing with needle-like shark teeth. Everyone's mask was different, but they all wore that same happy, psychotic smile. The bride, her groom (who was just as mangled as Amy, including a his-and-her mask), and their guests limped their way around him, surrounding him like zombies. They all carried torture weapons that looked horribly medieval, all while laughing hysterically. They had stopped advancing, but Amy still approached. The Doctor can still remember looking at her and finally seeing the slit that necklaced her throat, the slashes on her pale wrists, and the bloodied eyes that showed through the tie around her head. She eventually swung her ax across his chest and pushed him through the TARDIS doors, where a pool of blood stood out against the grey faces of death.

He awoke choking, gagging on the taste of rust and sugar that had flooded his mouth. It was so violent that he fell over and landed on his hands and knees, where he renched. He couldn't help but sob too as he shuddered from the pain that run through him. Tonight was bad, even by his standards. After he recovered, he still shook from the memories and his tears. It wasn't until he had sat up that realized his T-shirt stuck to him, but not from the sweat. He was bleeding - right above his hearts.

He wiped his eyes and got up, his legs almost yelling at him to sit the hell down. But he continued to his door, throwing off his now red-patched, white shirt to the ground. He was going to the bathroom across hall to clean himself up, like he did every night after he woke up with some mysterious injury. He'd have to tell the TARDIS to put one in his room though...

He poked his head out and looked around. No one was up.

Good. He didn't want to face anyone right now and have to explain why he was up and why he was bleeding and shirtless. He had had to once, when Amy was walking around the TARDIS because she'd lost her way (again) and saw the Doctor limping to the bathroom. That night was maybe two weeks ago and he had such a disgusting dream that he needed to go to the bathroom to properly throw up. Amy was worried sick and almost called River and half the galaxy after he had coughed up blood. He'd tried to convince her that he had a stomach virus and she reluctantly accepted it. But now the Doctor was careful not to disturb his Ponds. He didn't need them fawning over him like a child.

That is until he bumped into Rory.

They fell to the ground like two-thirds of the Stooges - awkwardly. All Rory saw before he slammed into his best friend was his bare chest - not the greatest sight to a happily, newly married straight guy. It felt awful (-ly awkward) as his hands went up instinctively and they touched said bare chest. Rory lay on the floor, embarrassed and paralyzed by how not straight that encounter was.

And how his hands were wet.

With blood.

"Man, are you okay?" he began, getting up so he can help his mate. "I think you're hurt. I might've done that when I-" But Rory stopped dead as he took a look at the Doctor - a good look.

On a less alarming note, he was shirtless and if Rory had to say so, the Doctor wasn't as pale and skinny as he had imagined (not in that way). One might have said that he looked hot with his bed-head and the fact that he was wearing nothing but his blue-striped pajama bottoms - which hung low on his small hips. But on a truly alarming level, the Doctor looked anything but hot right now. His hair was all over the place and sticking to him with sweat. His face was ashen and gaunt and his eyes were swollen and red. His skin was abnormally pale - even for him - and had a strange greenish tint to it. The most frightening thing was that there was a gaping gash across his chest that was still bleeding and that his wrists were cut too, dripping blood onto his hands and the floor.

Rory didn't have time to be shocked over what he saw. He didn't have the patience for his chest to tighten at the sight of blood and his heart to drop twenty stories down. He wasn't going to cover his mouth and gauge what he saw. He only scowled as he marched toward the Doctor and gripped his arm, right on top of the cut.

"R-Rory...Rory!" The Doctor protested. He tried to yank himself free but to avail. Rory had him in an iron clasp as he was trudged along to the bathroom. The Doctor tried to get a good look at his face, but all he saw was a blank, unreadable frown.

Rory pushed his friend into the bathroom with an annoyed shove. The room was fairly small, only big enough to hold the two of them. It wasn't the main bath of the TARDIS. That was located at the far end of the first hall, past all the rooms (one for every companion). This one had a sink to the right, the toilet next to it, the linen closet right across, and the shower filling up the rest of the space. Rory made the Doctor sit on the toilet before he locked the door.

"You care to tell me what's wrong?"

The Doctor remained quiet. His eyes were now strangely intrigued with the pattern on the tiled floor. He just couldn't make himself look at Rory. Rory was such a caring, young man. He never got angry and when he did, it was usually because he was defending Amy. He couldn't stand the idea of him being disappointed in him. And he wasn't doing anything wrong! He had nightmares for crying out loud! But he would tell Amy and Amy would just have to make a big deal out nothing. He didn't want to talk about his issues. Not when they wouldn't understand.

"Doctor?" Rory tried again. When he didn't answer, Rory just sighed and got to work. Sometimes he felt that he was only there to patch up the bruises they got from traveling. It sucks sometimes being nurse.

"Doctor, I don't know what's wrong. I'm not an expert in anything, but you have to tell someone if you're having troubles. I mean, you could've just had an accident and I'm just acting like my mother for no reason. But you sulking around the TARDIS at this hour, bleeding everywhere isn't a good look for you. Then again, your usual look isn't too spectacular either, but you look like death. And I've seen death. At the hospital, I saw some really bad people. Real sick, they were. But none of them woke up out of bed with cuts all over-"

"What do you think is wrong, Rory?" the Doctor asked in a quiet voice.

Rory jumped a little as he cleaned the Doctor's wrists. He hadn't expected that. "I think that you've been hiding something from me and Amy and that you just wake up all fine, pretending nothing's wrong. But you look sick. Too sick to ignore. And don't tell me it's some stomach virus. I'm a nurse."

"You wouldn't understand." And for the first time in a long while, the Doctor was being truthful. He sincerely, in both of his hearts, doubted that any of his Ponds would blindly accept what was happening. Amy, as he said before, would lose all sanity and reason and behave like a hysterical mother. She'd get all fussy and the Doctor was too old and too tired to have her buzzing all around him, worried over every little thing like if he were a child. And Rory - no matter how sweet, compassionate, caring, and understanding this man was, he wouldn't believe him. Not at all or in the least bit. Rory just wouldn't sympathize. Or he would understand and insist on putting him in a home because, no matter how alien the Doctor was or how spacey-wacey, there was no explaining how he woke up every night bleeding and hurt.

"You know what," Rory said bitterly as he finished sewing the Doctor's wrists, "I wouldn't understand."

No matter how sad or lonely or isolated the Doctor felt, he had always had that small spark of hope within him. A part of him - so small, it was - hopefully and readily believed that Amy and Rory would turn his expectations around. He envisioned them shattering his glass wall of doubt and that they would help them figure out this conundrum. Together, he imagined, they would overcome this difficulty and become closer than ever before.

Then Rory started to talk.

He mumbled ferociously under his breathe as he started on the Doctor's chest, only speaking up when he wanted a rhetorical answer from the Doctor. It was odd seeing him so angry yet so hurt. Because that's what he was - hurt. His voice trembled with emotion and was thick, not with tears, but with pain. It was like a bomb going off and the smoke was clearing. The Doctor struck something he wasn't willing or ready to face. And neither was Rory.

"Of course I wouldn't understand. Why would I? I'm just Rory Williams: the intergalactic, time-traveling nurse. That's all I'll ever be to you, isn't it?" - he turned to his patient - "Isn't it?! I'm nothing but a third wheel - against my wife and her imaginary friend," his voice choked out. He stopped cleaning the gash suddenly. He leaned against the sink, his back toward it with his elbows behind him. But he was restless; his hands shook uncontrollably and he couldn't stop himself from clenching and unclenching them.

He then looked to the Doctor, with sad, sad eyes, and asked, "You know that's true, don't you? I'm here only because Amy's married to me. She'd feel awful if I wasn't here, but because she'd feel guilty. I'm here to waste space. And I always will because I don't understand. Since I was a kid, I didn't understand. I couldn't get why Amy insisted on and on that her Raggedy Doctor was real. I didn't get why she was enamoured by this fake friend she conjured up one day. Because fascinated is too nice a word, she was in love with you. Since day one. And the only time she ever looked at me like I wanted her to - the only time I wasn't that boy from across the street - was when we played Space Traveling. She was herself and I was you. That's when she looked at me like I was something amazing. Something special. And now I never get that look. She's got the real thing to gawk at now. I just waited 2,000 years for her." He started to cry. "I just gave my life to protect her. I sat there for thousands of years because I couldn't bare the idea of her being alone. So who cares about what I've been through because I wouldn't understand. All these years have been so boring, so I don't get anything."

The Doctor could just sit there, simmering in his own guilt. He felt awful. He felt disgusted with everything. Rory Williams the Un-killable. Rory Williams, the Boy Who Waited. Roranicus Pondicus. Rory Williams the Last Centurion, who protected his dead girlfriend for 1,856 years, felt useless. He felt unappreciated. He was just the glue to them, that's all! He was just the most loyal companion he could have wished for. He just the most amazing husband ever and the Doctor could just envy how selfless and how compassionate Rory was by his simple nature. A human with one heart cared more than he did with two.

But he could say was, "Do you have bad dreams, Rory?"

He looked at him like his cut grew an eye. "What?"

"Bad dreams - do you have them?"

"Of course. Everyone does. Why does that - "

"You've been having them every night, though, haven't you? That's why you're up at this hour."

Rory stared back at the Doctor, truly speechless. After all that - after all he had said - he was asking about dreams? Honestly, he did not understand that at all. No matter what happened, the Doctor was confusing - and he even thought the Doctor knew that too.

The Doctor continued speaking. "You have them every night, at the exact same time, they end exactly the same way, and you wake up at the exact moment as you had done the previous night. They're the deformed version of memories, aren't they? They end with you dying and you wake up hurt."

Rory, beyond himself truthfully, lifted up the left sleeve of his robe. Underneath, starting on his forearm, were several small but horribly grotesque gashes on his arm. They were jagged and red - fairly new - and only some of them were hastily stitched together, a quick fix. They were white around the edges and gaping open; if he moved too much, they would open up again.

"They're my memories, Doctor," he said hopelessly. "They're mine, but they're not. Everyone is demented and ugly and out to kill me. They've been my childhood, my wedding, you guys. But they all end with you two leaving me behind and, years later, Amy coming back to kill me."

"Mine end with me drowning in blood."

Rory's eyes went from shock to hurt to realization to sympathy in a matter of seconds. "And you couldn't tell me that?!" Rory dropped his sleeve and ran a frustrated hand through his hair. "That's your problem, you know? You don't talk. You said I wouldn't 'understand.' Well, look! We're going through the exact same thing."

The Doctor spoke with his head hung, staring mindlessly at the floor. "I'm a 900-hundred-and-something-year-old Time Lord. I never know what to say or tell you guys. I never know what will hurt you."

"Doctor, we don't -" Rory just sighed heavily. "We don't need you to hide what can kill you just because you don't think we'll be able to comprehend something so alien. We're here knowing already that the impossible will happen."

"And that's my fault!" the Doctor yelled with a sad croak, rising from his toilet seat. "You said it yourself: I change people. I fashion them into the impossible. I make soldiers out of children - because to me, that's what you are. Children." He swallowed harshly, afraid to continue. "Why would I tell you something like this? So you two can just blindly accept this and say, 'Well, it's alien!' I can't have that anymore. You two cannot know everything, because the more you know, the more you change. Amy's no longer Amelia Pond. And you're longer Rory the Nurse from Leadworth. I can't expose you to more than what you need to know."

"Doctor, I didn't tell you two because there are conditions for this - this issue. And I know them because I am still Rory the Nurse. But you can't keep us here, in the dark, on a 'need-to-basis.' We're here because we want to be. We're here because we already get that things happen - good, bad, and weird. We're here because we're family, in a way. We know you don't have any and that you need us. Like we need you. And family lets people know what's wrong because we know you're not perfect. You've got issues. And they're getting worse if you continue to pretend like you're some Messiah, carrying the weight of consequences or some bull like that."

The Doctor stood in place, awkwardly in front of Rory. It was times like these when he looked his true age - like a scared child. Because, even for a Gallifreyan, the Doctor wasn't too old. He felt it, but he wasn't. He was a lonely, scared child without any mummy or daddy to cry to when things got hard. And all this time he just needed his parents to hold him because he was having bad dreams.

And Rory was going to do that.

He turned to his first aid kit and pulled out some disinfectant. "Let me finish cleaning you up. I think we both need our sleep tonight."

"What?" the Doctor blurted, doing that thing with his hands again. "I'm supposed to just to bed, like this never happened?"

"No, that's not what I'm saying. I mean that - after any nightmare, no matter how long it takes, we always have to go to bed eventually. And it's usually in the morning that we get better."

The Doctor could just painfully smile at Rory. This time, it was him who doubted that things could get better. What caused the dreams? What did they mean? Was Amy having them too, or was it just them? He didn't know the answers, for the first time in his life. But also, for the first time, it didn't matter. Because he didn't have to fix it. He had help...

...from his broken little soldiers.

to be continued