This story does have a bit of imagery that may disturb in it. It also is about the aftermath of a natural disaster (earthquake) and how some people may react to it. It was not written to offend anyone, and if it does offend, then I apologise for that.

Full Circle

The Doctor had dropped them right into the aftermath of an earthquake, somewhere in a galaxy he hadn't even heard the name of.

The area was in complete ruins, but the people who lived there, all of them looking different to humans and more like large walking and talking dogs, were trying to continue on their lives, rescue loved ones and get out while they still lived.

The Doctor took one look outside and his face fell, Amy had taken one look at the Doctor and had immediately suggested they go somewhere else if the Doctor didn't want to do this.

Rory just stared at his wife. "No, we'll stay."

Amy looked at him with a startled expression on her face. "Really? You want to stay in this mess? Why?"

The Doctor frowned at her, but Rory understood why she was acting this way. When they had been children, Amy would make up ways in which her parents disappeared. One of them was very similar to this, because sometimes the bodies were never found or couldn't be identified. She knew she had parents, but they were gone and she hadn't been able to understand.

They all understood now that it had been the cracks, but still, this was one thing Amy hadn't yet been exposed to in her own life, that she had fantasised when she was a kid in another life that never happened. Well, outside the news on the telly anyway.

"Because there are people hurt," the Doctor stated and, with careful, precise steps that Rory had thought him incapable of doing, the Doctor made his way outside to the nearest dog person, bent down and begun talking to it.

He couldn't tell if it was a male or female from where he was and, with a deep breath, he trod out of the TARDIS himself and into the world of natural disaster.

When he had been growing up with Amy, all she wanted him to be when he grew up was a doctor. He had the smarts for it, he could have passed his exams if he had really wanted to be a doctor, but truth be told, he didn't think it would suit him at all.

He found being a doctor too...impersonal. He had found rather quickly, that if he was going to be a doctor, he'd want to be more active with his patients, but that wasn't the doctor's job. Doctor's were there to diagnose, they were there to do operations and either went with general health or picked a certain profession.

He wanted to help anyone and everyone, and he found that he saw those traits more often in the people who were from the nursing staff. So, he had quit his learning to become a doctor (Amy hadn't talked to him for weeks) and joined in with nursing school.

He wasn't well liked to begin with. He had told the others, mostly all women, that he had quit trying to become a doctor because he felt nursing was more where he fit in. He soon found out that most men who went into nursing did so only because they failed to become a doctor and went for the next best thing. Most other men were bitter about it and it showed.

After a while though, they realised that he was fit for a nurse. That he was very much happy to help the patients. That he was willing to put up with sick and shit and old people. That he was willing to talk to patients to see how they were.

He fell into the profession easily. And soon, he had a job at the local hospital, and found himself looking after coma patients. He had talked to them, too.

Looking out at the sea of debris and fallen buildings, he felt entirely inadequate to help, but knew that people needed it from anyone willing to give it. Because he knew that it didn't matter what this race of dog people looked like, they were still people and they were hurting.

He watched as the Doctor fell as he tried to get up too fast and grinned. Carefully picking his way over to where the Doctor was, he held out a hand and helped the alien man who was their designated driver to his feet.

"Yes, thanks Rory. Well, it is exactly as it looks like. Earthquake."

With that said, the Doctor started to scrounge around in the debris calling out that he was a doctor and willing to help, if anyone could answer him.

Rory looked over to the dog man, since he could see it was a man now and nodded. "Are you hurt? I'm a nurse. If there's anything you might need, I can see what I can do..."

"My family...they're still trapped," came the unexpected reply and Rory frowned and looked to the layers of rubble he was standing on, now wondering if he was inadvertently stepping on the pieces that held a child, or this man's wife, or a parent.

He now understood why the Doctor was doing what he was, but it was unlikely he'd be able to hear a reply through the layers. So, without any thought to pitfalls or other dangers, he got on his hands and knees and begun shifting the heavy pieces of stone and less heavy pieces of wood away, so he could try and find a way into what was left of the building. If his family were lucky, they may have been saved by pieces of furniture, or lucky enough to get caught in a place the rubble wasn't falling as hard.

Soon, he had a hole that led into a cubby of space that hadn't been touched in the cave in, in which he found an old woman. Her ears were floppy and lopsided, her fur a bedraggled mess of grey and rust and whiskers were growing out from everywhere. She was whining slightly in pain and fright.

Her body was covered with pieces of rubble and some glass, and he noticed that there was blood. Not too much on the outside, but he knew that the probability that she was bleeding internally was pretty much high, and she may not survive the night.

He popped his head back out to look at the man. "I found someone, an old woman."

"My ma. She is in poor health as it is..."

Nodding, Rory went back down into the hole he made and trod his way carefully over to the woman. He crouched down beside her and held his arms out in a comforting way. "Hey, I know, I look strange, but don't worry, I'm here to help. Can you tell me where it hurts most?"

The old woman moved her head, and to his horror, one of those ears on top of her head which he thought was just lopsided freely moved across her head and he was almost sick. Her ear was hanging by threads, and he didn't so much as have a needle on him to sew it back on. Not to mention nothing to help with pain.

"Oh...god. I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do about that. I can try to free you from the rubble though, if you want?"

She nodded and the last strand of muscle snapped and her ear fell off.

He scrabbled to the hole, pulled himself out, crawled a few paces away and was sick. He looked around afterwards, the dog man looking at him worriedly, standing in the same spot he had started in and shivering with shock. A blanket, he needed a blanket to put over him.

He can go back in the hole with another one for the woman too. Later.

The Doctor now had Amy at his side, both of them walking around the area and calling out, hoping to hear any survivors. While they had their backs away from him, he made his way as fast as he could without falling over back to the TARDIS. Inside, he found exactly what he was looking for just inside the door.

He gave the door a pat and grinned. If there was proof that the ship was truly alive, this was it.

He was soon wrapping one of the blankets around the man, moved some of the sturdier, big pieces of rubble into some semblance of a seat and got him sitting down, the blanket held tightly in furry hands. "Stay here. I'll go get Amy over there to keep you company. Don't try to go to sleep alright, just...talk to her, or let her talk to you."

He got a nod for an answer and soon Amy was there, talking to the man. Bringing up all the courage he could grasp, he made his way back to the hole. He climbed back down, and was glad to see the woman still alive. "Here, I got you a blanket. It might help keep you a bit warmer as I try to shift this lot off."

With that said, he put it over the little part of her top body he could see. She must have been dozing in a chair when the building had collapsed. A piece of sturdy wood was above her, saving her from being completely buried. He hadn't noticed that the first time he had come down.

He started with getting the rubble off her top half, and was horrified at the bruising he found. He felt around her ribs, and was surprised to find only one of them was broken. Well, that was hopeful, he thought to himself, as he got to her lower body.

Then he stopped. Her abdomen was hard. She had internal bleeding, and it was bad. By his guess, she didn't have long to live. He bowed his head, patted her shoulder and said, with as much as a strong, caring voice as he could muster. "Your son is alive and unhurt for the most part. Do you want to see him?"

She understood, he could see that. She understood that her time was up. And she nodded her head slightly, which had him once again heading out towards the man.

He stopped in front of him, Amy hugging him to her side and talking animatedly about the travels and people they had helped on their journeys with the Doctor.

"Sir, I'm sorry. There's not much I can do. I don't think she's got long left, but she wants to talk to you. Come on, I'll help you down."

He was afraid in that moment, that the man would refuse, but in the end, he followed after him and Rory helped him down into the hole. It was a bit cramped in there with one extra person, but he found that it was worth it. He didn't have to lead the way to the woman, as there wasn't much space.

He didn't listen to the conversation that was had after that. He could understand it until they started talking what he could only say was dog. He lost translation after that. He got as close as he could without seeming to be intruding on the moment and stayed still, until the small whines of the woman stopped and the man started his own.

Without talking, knowing now that the woman was dead, he covered her head with the blanket and steered the man away and back to the hole, rubbing his back at every second he got, knowing that sometimes it was the only comfort someone could get after having someone close to them die.

Words right then were useless.

As soon as they were up and out of the rubble, a happy, quite positively grinning with excitement, Doctor came bounding over to them. "I found your wife and children. Your wife has a broken arm and some bad bruising, but is otherwise fine, and your children were all unharmed. Your wife stopped anything from falling on top of them. She's a marvellously brave woman."

Rory tried to smile, but found that the reunion was not as happy as it could have been. Or maybe, he was just blinded by what he had just witnessed.

He watched as the man was reunited with the rest of his family, and couldn't even muster up the slightest grin.

After that, the Doctor gave them all a happy hug and moved on to the next collapsed building.

They stayed on that planet in the rubble, helping people try to find family members, or food that was edible, for a week. One of the still standing buildings was changed into a makeshift hospital and the injured taken there.

Rory had two places he frequented, having to just move the injured, if they could be moved, to the hospital, while the dead got their own place, lines of stillness and decay. A place people could go to see if their loved ones had been found dead or alive.

People tended to always go to the dead first, in the hopes that their loved ones weren't there, before moving to the hospital full of hope.

Sometimes even that hope wasn't enough.

Rory kept on helping evacuate people from the buildings, while the Doctor and Amy tried to help the people in the hospital. He soon found it was easier to find someone injured but going to live, or already dead, than watching someone die.

But in the end, he felt like it was where he belonged, that it was his job to do as he was. That even with the dying or dead, he was helping people. Just finding them sometimes was enough to help the rest of the family.

There were still people to be found by the time they left that place, but enough people were found that they could now do the work for themselves without too much outside influence from three odd looking strangers.

And now that they were back on the TARDIS, Rory was feeling like he had something very important in his life suddenly taken away. He felt useless, cut off from his calling, and extremely tired.

He had his first fight with Amy as his wife right after the door was closed and they were off into the vortex to rest for a while. She had thrown her hands in the air, stretched and sighed and said, in a very loud voice filled with relief "Thank god we're out of that mess!"

He had snapped. It was the first time in his life he ever remembered truly being angry with her. He had stormed off to his room, the one given to him when he and Amy hadn't shared a room on board, once he had first come aboard, as the Doctor forgot about the human need for closeness with their soon to be spouse.

They now shared a room, but both of them had their own separate room still, the Doctor always made sure all three were accessible for moments like this. He hadn't been aware that there would be moments like this.

He closed the door, flopped himself onto his bed and felt like his entire world had been lifted up from under him, yet he was too angry right then to do anything about it. He had almost managed to fall into an exhausted sleep when there was a knock on the door.

"Go away, Amy. I'm angry with you," he called out, and he turned his head to yell at her when the door opened, only to see the Doctor poke his head inside.

"Oh, good thing I'm not Amy then. Are you angry with me, too?"

Sighing, Rory shook his head. "No. Sorry."

The Doctor grinned at him, before entering his room and closing the door behind him. "Good, because I want to talk to you for a bit."

He froze at that, still lying down and thankfully now facing away from the Doctor. He stared blankly at the wall. "I'm not in much of a mood to talk right now, Doctor."

"I know, I know you're not. So, if you won't talk, at least listen."

He sighed, but nodded, knowing if he said no, the Doctor would just go ahead and talk his ears off anyway. He shook his head to get the image that followed out of his mind.

"The situation we were just in doesn't happen to me regularly. It does happen every now and again, but more than likely its well on its way to being sorted out. That we landed there was pure chance. Or, perhaps, the TARDIS's choice. She sometimes decides that I'm needed somewhere and overrides my coordinates. Cheeky old girl that she is."

The walls vibrated then and he heard a hum that last for a few seconds, before the Doctor grinned and patted the walls. "Naturally, she denies it. But that isn't the point. The point is I didn't mean to get us into that. Not as deep anyway. We could have left at any time and still known we had done something to help them. But you wanted to stay behind and do more. You couldn't do any more than you already were, Rory. You were doing your best, and your best was definitely good enough. Now, roll over and let me see your hands."

Confused, Rory followed the odd instruction, and barely registered that the Doctor really wanted to look at his hands until he yelled out a loud "OW! What was that for?"

"Rory, open your eyes and look at your hands."

His eyes had already been open, but he did glance down, and to his shock found that his hands were badly scraped, so much so that they were actually bloody. Yet again, he couldn't be too sure if the blood was his or not.

"Oh, I don't feel well."

"Of course not...here. Let me just..." The Doctor got out a handkerchief and got up, quickly disappearing into the bathroom attached to the room, before coming back and slowly and as carefully as he could ran it over his hands. The water it had been wetted with was warm, and it stung, but he soon saw that it was not too deep, but still enough to get him to bleed. He hadn't even noticed his hands had been hurt.

"I've been touching bloody people with bloody hands of my own. Oh god, Doctor...what if any of them were sick? Can I get their diseases? What if I start a plague on Earth from them because I got infected with something and there was nothing I could do to stop it?"

The Doctor shook his head. "Don't worry about that. None of their diseases are contagious to humans. I can give you a shot anyway to help boost your immune system if you truly are that worried over it. Let's just wait and get your hands better first."

With that said, the Doctor pulled out a tool that looked very much like the blue sonic screwdriver he had before the bigger green one he used now. With a few passes over his hand, Rory watched as his skin, in a rather painful pulling sensation, knitted itself back together again.

Then his anger came back. "You had this all the time and you never used it? Why!"

"It only works on small flesh wounds like yours. Anything deeper and it wouldn't fix all the damage and the person would still have been in pain and dying. Best to use the tools of the time period you are in, or else people start thinking you caused the earthquake to begin with..."

"Oh yeah, you do that so well, with your sonic and things."

The Doctor grinned at him and shrugged. "Where I go, so does my screwdriver. Doesn't mean I always use it, even though most of the time I do..."

He balled his now healed fists together and smacked them hard onto his mattress, before glaring at the Doctor. "You could have helped more than you did, and you didn't!"

Sighing, the Doctor shook his head. "No, I couldn't have. Time travel is very tricky sometimes, Rory. You can't do anything just because you have the power to do so. Sometimes you need to see the bigger picture, no matter how much that may hurt. We couldn't stop the earthquake from happening, we could only look for people trapped under the rubble and we could only help the best we could with the tools that were given us at the time. I'm sorry that it hurt you to see all that, but I'm not sorry that I didn't intervene in a bigger way, because I know the damage that doing so can cause."

"How could saving innocent lives be seen as causing damage? No, you're just too high and mighty to help the lower forms of life. Well, thanks for the hand cleaning, Doctor, but I want to be on my own right now. You've done enough for me."

The Doctor was silent for a few seconds, before he took a few calming breaths and started speaking. "Rory, I don't normally take kindly to people yelling in my face, but I know that this trip has been hardest on you. It was you who insisted on tearing your hands to help save lives. It was you who put himself in danger at nearly every minute he was awake to get people out of their houses. It was you who witnessed people dying and crying and scrabbling to be saved. That was you. Amy and I mainly stayed in the hospital doing what we could for those who would survive. We didn't see as much death as you did. And that hurts. I know it does, but please...try not to take it out on me and Amy. We didn't do anything wrong, and we were helping to the best of our abilities too, it was just in different ways to you."

He nodded, hard and fast and grinned. "Oh, I know all that. I know that, Doctor. I saw so much though. Like nothing I've seen before. I've looked after coma patients and normal sick people, or people with broken bones. At one stage I had to sew a bleeding hand which had been ripped open and kept the guy's spirits up while doing it."

The Doctor nodded and smiled at him, all the anger he had seen in those ancient eyes fading fast as he began talking. "Yes, and that makes you a good person, Rory. A very good person. Most people wouldn't think past getting them back on their feet and out the door as fast as possible. You truly cared."

Rory nodded, his smile fading. "I had to cut a dead woman open to get her babies out as they were still alive. Four little puppies, Doctor. And within minutes they had all died themselves. I saw a little boy with half his face cut off by a flying piece of glass and god, did that boy ever scream. And he's still alive out there. Hell, one adult all I found was the body decapitated. I never found the head. And I tried to. I tried to find some random persons head, Doctor. And you want to know the most horrible thing ever? The worst thing that happened there was that first woman I found. That man's mother. She was just sitting there, whining in pain, unable to move, and her ear Doctor. Her ear had almost been cut clean through by something. And it was just dangling by a thread. When she nodded when I asked her if she wanted to be free it fell off. It just snapped and come clean off, and she didn't even blink. She wasn't at all interested in her own ear being cut off. All she wanted was to be free, and she put all that faith into me. Some stranger who doesn't look anything remotely like her. And I couldn't do anything."

The Doctor looked at him then, his eyes boring into his own and Rory gulped, not knowing what he'd say or do. "Rory, it wasn't you know?"

He blinked. "What wasn't what?"

"Seeing that woman's ear fall off. It wasn't the worst thing to happen there. The worst had already happened. We just caught the aftermath of it. You're feeling guilty because you couldn't save her. That even the ones you did save would live their lives altered. And all this time, you're forgetting about yourself. What you did on that planet, Rory, it was selfless. Not a lot of humans would do that. Not a lot of many people at all would, if they weren't a part of the culture itself, and even then, not all would help. Some would gather who was left and run. What you did...I don't think you know how much bravery and courage and, and strength you showed down there."

The Doctor's words echoed through his brain and brought tears to his eyes. "I want it to stop, Doctor. I can't do it anymore..."

The Doctor smiled down at him, a sad, yet loving smile and pulled him into a hug. "You don't have to keep on doing it now. It's over. It's now past. What you can do now is let yourself feel how much it must have hurt you. Trust me, you don't want to have it haunt your life. And it can and will, if you don't let go of it. I speak from...very personal experience."

He didn't know if it was the words used, or just his own will that finally made him able to cry over it, but he did. And the entire time, the Doctor just held him. He hadn't had comfort like that since...well, at all in his life, except from his parents as a child. And he remembered two other Rory lifetimes.

The only thing that compared to this hurt was shooting Amy as plastic Rory. That had...well, that had been bad. And he had tried so damn hard to stop himself there, but failed.

He was still trying to make up for that.

He was falling asleep after calming down when the Doctor next spoke. Asking him in a soft, quiet voice if he was asleep.

"I'm not asleep yet, though close enough to it...why?" he mumbled into the Doctor's shoulder, which was where his head still happened to be. He never knew the Doctor's coat would come in handy for something, but right then he thought it made a rather good, if scratchy, pillow.

"Sleep, Rory. Then, when you wake up, I'll get you something to eat. You've got to be starving. You barely ate, and don't think I didn't notice that."

He huffed out what he hoped sounded like laughter, let go of the Doctor and curled up in his bed.

He slept for 8 hours and couldn't remember once dreaming.

Regardless of what the Doctor wanted of him right then and there, he decided first thing was first and he went off in search of Amy. He found her in her old bedroom, the one in which she had taken when travelling without him, and frowned. He had hoped she would be comfortable enough in their room for the night.

He stepped in, closed the door behind him, walked up to her and without saying a word, grabbed her in a hug and kissed her lips. It was all the apology he needed to give her right then. She was possibly the only girl he knew who didn't need to hear the words I'm sorry. Though, he knew one day soon, he'd say them. He just didn't want to now, because he didn't know if there'd be a repeat performance just yet of his yelling at her.

Thankfully his Amy always had understood that.

It was after they had made up in a rather spectacular fashion that left him feeling a little better about himself that he went off to follow the Doctor's instructions and eat something.

Life, it seemed, wasn't as shiny as it once was, and now this third Rory life of his was tainted but he decided that, if anything, he had found out that he was a good person for it still. And that was something he'd been trying to figure out about himself since the shooting Amy incident.

He didn't feel much like himself yet, but he knew he'd get there someday. Possibly even someday soon.

He had both Amy and the Doctor looking out for him now.

He didn't know how much he needed the support of both of them until now.