Author's Note: Character development for Rory is set approximately in mid-season 6. It smacks a bit of AU, because this is my sandbox (I'm a proverbial three year old building makeshift canonical structures) so don't knock down my castle. It's a tinge land-locked (ship-locked), but it was still fun to type up.

Disclaimer: Not mine.

Patchwork

or

Message in a (Rory-shaped, concussed) Bottle

When he was ten years old, Rory had ridden his bicycle right into a low-hanging branch of an impressively hard tree. Fortunately, the two teeth he'd lost as a result had been among his reborner set; unfortunately - as there was always an unfortunately to be had in such stories - he'd suffered from a torn ligament in his neck and a horrible, absolutely wretched concussion. He'd spouted nonsense for a day and spent the next three weeks sleeping without a pillow so that his neck didn't heal at the wrong angle, but he'd went without the thick, white brace recommended by the resident doctor to spare his dignity. A decade later, he still had difficulty pivoting his head side-to-side at impressive speeds. Not that he usually needed to.

Well, not that he had needed to, before touring the galaxy with Amy's Raggedy Doctor. His Raggedy Doctor now too, if he was honest with himself. Less Raggedy at the moment, more Gangly. That was it, his Gangly Doctor. Had a nice ring to it.

Could have used a quickly pivoting head today. Would have been useful in avoiding that nasty knock to his right temple.

"…Worse than I thought; he's mumbling nonsense," a disjointed voice reached him through a cloud of mental haze. Female, with an accent familiar enough that, if he had a map of Great Britain handy and a clear head, he could point out where the speaker probably-very-likely lived. Or, a least, originated from. He may have a concussion to rival that of the one he received at ten, but Rory was still (relatively) aware that Earth was at least three crisis behind him. The voice instantly became an anomaly.

With every intention to ask where he was, with whom he was, and what had happened to him, Rory opened both his eyes and his mouth. The former were forced to squeeze shut again against a wavering yet painful white light above him, and the latter caused the pain to spread from his temple to the area just behind his right eyebrow.

There was a rustling beside him, joined immediately by soft muttering that reminded him of the hissed arguments his parents used to participate in when trying to figure out the logistics of a holiday vacation with their son sitting (very aware of the tension in the front seat, but playing ignorant anyway, as rehearsed during the last vacation) tucked in uncomfortably with the luggage in the back seat. Rory'd forgotten about those - it was funny what memories the brain would tuck away to make room for two thousand years of a pseudo-lifetime.

Very little of the conversation was intelligible to him, but Rory was beginning to regain his ability to open his eyes without traumatizing his forehead. Headaches caused by pupil contraction were some of the worst, made worse still by a stellar concussion. One he was sure he had, if the erratic nature of his thoughts and the dizziness were anything to go by. As a nurse, he was inclined to go by whatever information his body could give him. A bashed temple was as good a clue as he was going to get.

His situation began to grow in its tangibility within his thoughts, and as it did so, everything else around him began to solidify. The air around him had the tang of the metallic chill associated with being in a part of a spaceship with crude life-support systems. Such a wonderful skill, being able to identify that even with an abused brain, something he'd never ever be able to explain to his family when (if) he and Amy ever settled for a life outside of the TARDIS and her erratic tendency to drop them off in places they never quite ever planned for.

Further silent moments of discerning his surroundings had Rory convinced that his shoulders were propped up against a frigid metal that seemed incapable of absorbing his body heat (rather, it was leaking a terrible sort of cold into his skin). Around him were the loud hums of an engine and an eerie dark of a place often neglected.

Right. That was it.

He was on a fifty deck spacecraft ferrying fifthly rich humans (on top) and incredibly poor people (on bottom) between some planet called Spree and another planet called Korztaz. The Doctor had been in the process of leading them to a great hall (inundating them with his traditional amount of encyclopedic knowledge) when they'd come to a perfect four way stop somewhere, presumably, in the lower decks of the ship. What had happened next had resulted in his getting lost just before finding himself on the receiving end of a concussion…and apparently whatever struggle he had put up had gone unnoticed by the Doctor or Amy. Go figure, right?

"…na, the velocity and pressure you applied in rendering the target unconscious was…zealously above that which I calculated necessary, I fear you have damaged him too gravely," it was a patient sort of dialogue attached to a wholesome (truly wholesome, as if it had more than one layer to it) male voice.

There was the responding sound of a hand thumping against something and then a hissed feminine voice, "You didn't calculate anything…" the rest of the complaint was lost in the woman's too-quick speech.

Rory made a valiant effort to shift himself into an appropriate sitting position, rubbing his jaw as he got his first proper look at his assailants. They were only outlines in the poor (seemingly no) lighting, hunched together and for all the world looking very un-intimidating now that he was conscious.

"…not too gravely, but I have a concussion," Rory interrupted, his voice cracking as he pressed his fingers against his tender temple, "any harder and you might have had a corpse…"

"Our intentions were not to damage you, Rory Pond," a soft sphere of light glowed from the space between the two figures, briefly illuminating them before it dimmed again. The woman, the parts of her that weren't still in the shadows, looked to be roughly close to the younger side of middle-aged and average while the…male…was one of the ugliest creatures Rory had ever seen. Which was saying something, as the Doctor had a wonderful knack of finding plenty of things with a lack of physical appeal.

Were those tentacles growing out of its nose? Rory rubbed his eyes.

Odd, but also oddly familiar.

"Williams," he corrected without much conviction, his hands falling limply to his sides again in exhaustion. Whether it was Pond or Williams, they knew his name, and that was all that mattered, "Where am I?"

"Deck 49, near the fifth-class luggage storage," the answer was surprisingly forthcoming. The woman was coming closer as she spoke, the shadow of her eyes becoming more pronounced as she hovered near him on her knees, taking a look at the damage she had apparently given him.

"I'm no good at accosting people in lower gravity. Gentle swing on Earth becomes a wallop on these trans-sector cruises," she added a moment later by way of apology. Rory mused, with a strange sort of absentmindedness, that she had one of those voices that sounded like it was meant to be loud. Whispering, for her, seemed to take more effort than it was worth.

But this all confused him. No, they confused him. His abductors were treating him with a benevolence not fitting of, well, abductors. What was more, they were apologizing for hurting him, in a way, which made this situation as rich as these sort of things got. What was even more...now that he was awake, neither tentacle-man nor Earth-woman seemed all to intent on getting him anywhere specific.

He eyed them skeptically and raised his chin (a mistake, as he was instantly dizzy), "W-what have you got planned, then? You know my name. Specifically, you know what the Doctor calls me, so I'm going to assume you're really here for him, or Amy, but got stuck with me," No one was ever really there for him. He was like that sidekick that was always overlooked, even in situations were needing a hostage for ransom was appealing to the bad guys. Or canon-fodder. No. He was just the faithful Centurion. Only remembered by those because of the mystery in the giant mystical box he was protecting. Nothing more.

"They'll find me," Rory warned wearily, "he'll give you a choice, one or all of us will run - there's a lot of running - then something on this ship will explode and people will float off into space. It's how these things always work."

The woman poked the growing bruise on his head with a finger, "I'm sorry to tell you this, but you ain't running anywhere, Sunshine."

"The only plan we have is for you, Rory Pond. We must keep you safe while the Doctor and his female companion run," the golden sphere returned again, along with that layered voice. Rory wondered, stirred by an echo of memory he couldn't quite access at the moment, if there was a connection between that light and the creature's speech.

Tentacle-man titled its head in consideration and continued, "Your prediction of the events to occur are accurate."

As if on cue, there was an ominous tremor and a rumble from the decks above. Rory cast his eyes to the opaque metal of the ceiling and found himself trying to stand, "You mean I'm supposed to sit down here while my wife runs around up there?"

His attempt to run away from his abductors was thwarted by his own body. In an instant, he was on his knees, the ship swimming around him in a way that threatened to make him nauseous. Betrayed, by himself. Pathetic.

"Oi, Sigma, help me get him settled down," the woman had given up all pretenses of talking silently now. Her voice managing to echo despited the continued clammer from up above.

Two pairs of hands began to maneuver him against the bulkhead, where he was left to lounge, panting heavily. When he felt gloved fingers on either side of his head, Rory tried to bat them away but was unsuccessful. It occurred to him that now, at this very moment, when most people would be afraid, he was annoyed. Annoyed and unsteady in his own head.

A soothing sound swam within his thoughts and the dizziness dissipated in its wake.

Thoughts more clear than previously before, he found himself muttering in understanding, " Of course! You're Ood."

Sigma nodded, reaching for the sphere attached to the front of his coat, "I am Sigma of the Ood, Rory Pond. I have sung of the Doctor and of the DoctorDonna," there was a small chortle in the shadows (the woman seemed to find this funny), "and I shall sing of you one day."

"But we got to make sure there's a you to sing about," the woman cut in, tucking a hand through his elbow as she crawled over. "That's why we're here. You have a knack for dying, but not this time, Doctor's orders."

Rory took to grumbling as the pair situated themselves on either side of him, "So, the Doctor knows about this, then? Figures... I think."

There was a pronounced silence, and he felt, rather than heard them speak simultaneously.

"-Not yet-"

"-Not presently-"

"How not yet is not presently?" he ventured to ask.

Sigma chose to answer, "Beyond the lifetime of your Doctor, Rory Pond."

"We can't say much more," the woman supplied apologetically with a pat of his arm, "spoilers. What we can tell you is that we're working on a bit of a paradox here. At some point, now, you died. It wasn't meant to be, Sigma and I saved you, and then today our Doctor worked out the wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff. So, we're here again, the first time for us, to save you from becoming a space ornament."

"You are important in the events to come, Rory Pond, both very near and very far. By saving your life, we have also saved the lives of two others," the Ood spoke in soft riddles, "Our time here is coming to and end, but you must carry with you a message to your Doctor."

"It's vi-tol," the woman stressed, "and important. To me..."

The tremors from above settled now, and the ship remained attached. Rory, not completely understanding what all had transpired to keep him out of the thick of the commotion, found himself sorry not to have been there but begrudgingly deeply relieved. It was as if the pressure of time around him, as well as the two flanking him, were silently expressing to him how important this concussion had been to his - and others - survival. That he was important now, even though he had been sidelined from the ongoing crises.

Looking from one to the other, Rory began to wish that he might have just a little more time with them. Their appreciation of him due to their knowledge of what was to come, despite their method of first catching attention, made him feel welcomed. As if he was sitting hunched on deck 49, next to the fifth-class luggage, with a pair of ordinary but inexplicably wonderful giants.

Rory tucked his own arm through Sigma's, forming a paradoxical chain of three. They'd have to get him to his feet somehow, anyway, when all of this was over. "What do I have to tell him?"

The air filled with a thick silence that was weighed down by a thousand unheard voices. The sphere of light appeared once more, "Tell the Doctor that the Ood will sing with the DoctorDonna for centuries to come. The burden of her thoughts shall not be hers alone, for as long as she is alive to bear them. Tell him."

A boney finger tapped his bruise as a gloved one settled on his uninjured temple, "And tell that spaceman that the most important temp of all of creation says to stay away from peoples' heads. Some things are sacred!"

Song, eerily wonderful, filled his mind even as she spoke, rendering him unable to respond and unable to forget the message he had been given to bear. It echoed of the savior of reality, even as she sat next to nobody-special him in the pits of ravaged ship. It praised the faithfulness of friends and strangers, and rang of the presence of hope in the face of all sorrow. And then, as it began to decrescendo near its end, the song of the Ood bade him good luck and farewell as everything began to fade around him to a peacefully shade black.

His last thought before he lost all consciousness was why they couldn't have used this method to abduct him in the first place.

Later, he would tell Amy that he lost his footing and smacked his head against a luggage rack and listen to her recount the wonderful battle against exploding space rodents that she almost singlehandedly (with a little help from the Doctor) managed to stave off (complete with a giddy reenactment from both involved). It was only much later, as the Doctor waved the sonic screwdriver over his bruise ('Just one more time, to check for any hidden damage. Luggage racks can be malicious, you'd be surprised'), that he found himself explaining the reason for the temporal residue in his mind (it was the only puzzle that Rory was going to solve for the Doctor, it seemed. Finally. Happily).

The (extraordinarily) tight hug that followed the initial moments of confusion was a bit unexpected, but the Doctor bothered to give no explanation before hurrying away.

But Rory didn't need to ask. He was a nurse, and he knew only too well the sight of quick patchwork over an open wound.

Author's note II: This isn't your basic JE fix-it. But to answer the question of 'Wah? Why is Donna here? How?' Condensed: The Ood done it.

I've always loved Ood Sigma. Since I remember when the Doctor used to pick up companions outside of the 20th and the 21st century (and a few not even human)...I thought, why not him, then? So, in this, Sigma is along for the ride, keeping Donna and Future!Doc company. Although, note, should there be a continuation of this, Donna won't really spend the rest of forever with the Doctor. No companion ever really does, sadly.