Author Notes: So, I'm just gonna come right out now and say that this fic is WEIRD. Like, really weird. It is standalone, but in a roundabout way can be read as connected to my fic from a couple of months ago 'Keeping Faith'.

Basically, this fic has come through the coincidental combination of watching Saturday's episode, The God Complex, and having gone to see Doctor Faustus at the Globe on Friday. The topics of faith were too connected for me to let go, and Arthur Darvill and Paul Hilton are, frankly, incredible in the play (successfully affirming my love for the play, and wiping all memory of a previous version I'd seen – it managed to work in Star Wars, all I'm saying).

So, this is a fusion of Doctor Who and Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, the 2011 Globe production, set straight after series 6's The God Complex, with small additional references to series 2's The Satan Pit, series 3's The Shakespeare Code and series 5's Vampires of Venice.

Complicated, perhaps, but I really, really hope you enjoy it!

Losing Faith

The Doctor was wrong. Rory wouldn't call him out on it, but he was.

He was wrong in thinking that Rory had never held faith. He was wrong in thinking that Amy was the only one who had utmost belief in him and his ability to save them.

Because Rory had used to have that, not so long ago. He had given his delicate faith to the Doctor completely, utterly, because it had been the only thing he had been able to do. The only thing that had kept him sane.

And what was worse was that, unlike Amy, it had taken so, so much for the Doctor to earn it in the first place. Amy had always had faith in the Doctor, even when she pretended otherwise, even when she had been forced to wait. Rory had seen what the waiting did to her, and he had been mistrustful. Even travelling with the pair of them, that first time in Venice, he was sure in the knowledge that he would never be able to trust the Doctor.

You know what's dangerous about you? It's not that you make people take risks. It's that you make them want to impress you. You make it so they don't want to let you down. You have no idea how dangerous you make people to themselves when you're around.

But then it had crept upon him, so quietly, so shyly, so tentatively that he hadn't even realised it was happening.

Until in the bowels of the Earth, he had given the Doctor his faith, and proved his own words true.

And that light had twisted, the Crack had eaten into the fabric of the world, and it had swallowed Rory whole.

And that was another time the Doctor was wrong. So, so horribly wrong. Terrifying wrong, in such a way that Rory would never, could never tell.

Because Rory had not truly winked from existence that day. Rory had not blinked one moment in the depth of the Earth and the next moment in a freezing Roman military camp.

Rory could recall every star and grain of sand in the eternity that soared between. Every man, every fool, every pain. Each action that nearly broke him.

Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of it.

Because Rory had given his faith utterly, truly to the Doctor. And He had seen it in his heart, and rejoiced at the pain that could be wrought through it.

Love and Faith. The two things that made Rory's world turn. Amy and The Doctor.

They had been the two things that he had held onto with all his being in that in-between-eternity, so that when Amy's love pulled him back into reality, plastic as he was, he had still been Rory, even though it had made Him scream and wrench with indescribable rage, they had been the two things that had made Rory untouchable, in the tiniest of ways.

So when Amy had rescued him, so when the Doctor had saved them, Rory's love had only been stronger, Rory's faith had only been more powerful.

Because as a dear friend in that eternity had once lamented to a helpless Rory, right there, at the toll of the last bell, there should have been no end; there should have been no saving. He had held them tight, even if only one of them had walked in with blind choice, despite all Rory's attempts to sway him otherwise.

You did not attempt. You wanted the company in your misery. You were losing your anchors. You damned him as much as he damned himself.

Rory had once said it was like having a door in his head. And that was no lie. There were two thousand years and a Roman living behind there. But there was also something else. A dark shadow, a snatch of a face, a taunting laugh and an eternity of pain.

A door, and an attic.

Never step into the attic.

Keep the attic bolted tight with Faith and Love, even if you are forced to use Faith and Love as the key the door.

So the Doctor was wrong.

He was wrong about Rory's faith, gifted so completely to him, a tiny precious gem, hidden deep down in the glittering diamond caves of Amy's own belief.

He was wrong about the Crack. He was so, so wrong about the nothingness.

His faith had been nearly unbreakable; it had survived on a tether of the most gossamer of threads, wound tight with his love for Amy, and her own belief in turn. Through all of that.

Until it was severed by the one thing in the universe that could touch it.

Amy. And his love for her.

Rory had faith in the Doctor, utmost faith, until the day he caught a glimpse of the Timelord's true self. Until the day he watched one Amy die so the other could live. Until he saw an older Amy's loss of faith, and a younger Amy's blindness for what it truly was.

But the Doctor could never know this, he could not understand, could not predict, because Rory had only ever told him about the door. Never the attic.

Never the attic.

The attic bolted by Love and Faith. Except now Rory only had Love.

So the Doctor had thought he was saving them, by leaving his best friends behind.

The bolt creaked and strained.

He laughed with a terrible joy.

Rory sat bolt upright in bed, drenched in sweat and an illusion of blood, Amy undisturbed beside him.

Praise Him.

This wasn't how Amy had imagined it, living her life with Rory, settled and happy. Because she had imagined it, in her quietest of moments, in those rare seconds when she acknowledged that her time with the Doctor might not, in fact, be forever.

It had been a month since the Doctor had left them with a house, a car and a good luck.

It had been three weeks since Rory had laughed.

It had been two weeks since Rory had smiled.

It had been one week since Rory had slept more than a couple of hours in a night.

Her husband was becoming a shadow of himself, pale and drawn. She watched as he tried to pretend to her that nothing was wrong, as he tried to create some semblance of the person he usually was.

As if she didn't love him. As if he wasn't her world. As if she didn't hear the nightmares. As if she didn't see his haunted looks when he thought she was turned the other way.

She had tried to call him out on it – she was Amy, of course she had. But he had just ignored it, brushed it aside, blinked and moved on.

It was too impassive. It was too defeated.

It was not Rory, and Amy was starting to get truly scared in a way she hadn't felt since the Dream Master and his sick reality game when she had lost Rory the first time.

Except this was worse, because she was watching it happen.

"I didn't lie to you! I gave you every chance!"

Amy jumped. She was home early from town, and had just come in the door. The voice was decidedly Rory's, even if the crack and anguish in the tone was marring his usually beautiful timbre.

Who was he talking to?

"Of all that is in this world, dear friend, of all that I have now been borne to witness, and you think you can deceive me still?"

Amy froze. She didn't know that voice, but there was something in it that made her heart seize with a familiar feeling. A feeling she preferred to only take hold when the Doctor was by her side.

Whoever – whatever – was in the other room with her husband, they were decidedly not local.

"You must appreciate the irony. I, the loyal servant, you, the pathetic human. How time must mock us still."

"Why are you here?" Rory's voice was so soft, so broken.

"Because I am the one you regret the most, lowly soul that I am. He could have sent another of stronger vice, but not another who might wield stronger pain."

"Then let Him come Himself, if he be so wronged!" Rory's voice spat out with renewed venom, the lilt of his words unfamiliar to Amy, as if they were an echo of another part of her husband. A part she didn't know as well.

"Oh, do not fret, my dear. He shall come. Your own bell shall toll yet still. You have finally lost your faith, as I once did. And we are glad."

A strange rushing noise, like a vacuum sucking air out of the world into dead space, and Amy burst through the door in time to see stray bits of paper flutter from the coffee table to the ground, and watch her husband sink to his knees, arms wrapped tight around himself, a sob wrenching through his body harshly.

"Not again, please not again, please please please…" His words flowedlike a mantra, and all Amy could do was to join him on the floor and fold her husband into her arms, whispering words of love and comfort that was nonsensical at most.

Because the man in her arms was not Rory. He was broken, and Amy had no idea why, other than there was an outside force involved.

As she sat there, holding Rory close to her, there was only one person she could think of who could help them.

And damn that man if he didn't pick up her call, because Amy Williams would tear apart the universes to find him.

Time is relative, indeed, but the Doctor definitely did not expect a call from one of his favourite companions only a week after he had dropped her off. Surely domestic life with The Nose couldn't be that painfully dull already? He sighed, and decided to let his answering machine kick in. She needed to know that he wasn't prepared to ruin her life. Rory's life. Their life together.

Apparently though, he was really unprepared for her message, although the rather pissed tone was definitely familiar.

"Doctor? Doctor, I know you're there! I need you to pick up! Doctor, please!" A sigh, a pause and… a sob? Quieter now, "Doctor, there's something wrong with Rory. Something, something your kind of wrong. He won't talk to me, I'm just watching him fade away and I don't know what to do any more. There's something threatening him. I haven't seen it, but I've heard it. I think it wants to take him away, and the way Rory looks…it's like he's just given up. Doctor, please, I can't lose him. I don't know who else to call… just… please come back…"

The Doctor lunged for the phone, Amy's words building in him a horrible sense of dread and what if I did the wrong thing for them again? He was too late, the line was dead.

But he knew where to find them. And he knew the TARDIS would take him where he needed to go.

"I'm sorry." Rory's voice was soft from where he sat on their sofa as Amy came into the room with a mug of tea.

"Don't apologise, idiot." She said it with her usual tone a smirk, but there was a crack in the façade, and fear in her eyes. She settled next to him, folding up her legs, "Rory, talk to me, please. Who was that?"

Rory jerked so harshly that he spilled scalding tea all over his hands. "W-what?"

He didn't hiss in pain, he didn't make any move as if he had noticed, as Amy watched the skin turn rapidly and painfully red, "Rory!"

The dazed look had returned to his eyes, and she forcibly removed the mug from his grip, guiding him to the kitchen and turning on the cold tap to run his hands under. "It's fine… It's just hot tea…" he mumbled.

"No, Rory, no it is not fine! What is wrong with you? Where are you?"

"I'm right here… and I've had a lot worse…" There was something in his tone that just made Amy freeze. A horrible, indescribable dread filled her, because she had only ever seen him like this once before. A brief glimpse, of a two thousand year old Rory, rather than the mere decades old Rory she married.

Amy carefully dabbed his hands dry, before catching his chin and forcing those dead, defeated eyes to look at her, "Who were you talking to?"

"A friend."

"A friend?" She repeated incredulously, "He did not sound like your friend!"

"And what would you know of friendship?" Rory yelled harshly, wrenching away from her and stumbling backwards, "What would you know of pain? He no more wishes it upon me as I did to him! We have no choice! All we do is find others, companionship, to share our torment with, and that makes us wrong? Why should we be alone?"

Rory swayed as Amy stared at him in shock, completely taken aback, only lurching forwards just in time to catch him as he fell, "Rory!"

And then her husband was back, and he just shook his head, staring up at her with a hopeless love, "Amy, I don't think I can do this again. I don't think I can survive a second time…"

"A second time? Rory, what..?"

And then he was screaming, doubled over and clutching his head, "No no no no no-"

"Amy! Rory!" Amy had never been so glad to hear that voice in her life, a sharp cry ringing through from their hallway, followed quickly by a crazy man with floppy hair and stupid clothes.

He skidded to his knees on the hard kitchen floor next to the couple, just as Rory's body slumped against his wife, resting his head on her shoulder, his entire being radiating exhaustion. "I have never been so happy to see you on time in my life!" Amy gasped out with a ghost of a grin, her hazel eyes pleading with the Timelord's, "Help him!"

The Doctor ducked his head, reaching to take Rory's face in his hands, trying to get the human to look at him, "Oh, Rory, what have they done to you?"

"Who?" Amy hissed.

"I don't know yet. No one good. There's something in this house. An echo of some sort of energy, something just gone. No doubt whatever was talking to your husband." He turned back to Rory, "Rory? Rory, look at me."

Weakly, Rory tried to refuse, pulling his head away despite Amy's tight grip on him, "N-no…" He squeezed his eyes shut, pressing his forehead into Amy's collarbone.

The Doctor was incredibly disconcerted. This wasn't Rory. This wasn't the incredible human that he had come to know, the wonderful man who was the perfect match for Amelia Pond. Something was very, very wrong. "Why? What's telling you not to? Rory, I need you to focus on my voice, I need you to look at me so I can help. Rory, I need you to trust me."

"No!" Rory's eyes snapped open, and this time he really did wrench away, his eyes cold as he half fell backwards until his spine collided with the kitchen cupboards. "Don't ask of me what I cannot give! Don't pretend to be salvation. There is nothing to be done to save Rory."

Amy and the Doctor flinched in shock. Amy shook her head, "He keeps talking like that – not sounding like Rory. But that's the first time he's referred to himself in the third person. Doctor, what's happening to him? Do something!"

The Doctor just shook his head, still reeling from Rory's quite vehement refusal to believe in him. And then his eyes hardened in a match of Rory's own, "Whoever, whatever you are, you picked the wrong human to possess. I'm giving you one chance to leave his body now."

Rory's mouth twisted bitterly, hopelessly, but his eyes had softened, and Amy saw a glimpse of her husband in them, "I d-don't think love is enough… I t-thought it w-would be," His teeth were gritted, and his muscles were tense as if it was painful to talk. Tears gathered in his eyes. "I'm so s-s-sorry Amy. I love you… but I c-can't… I c-can't s-stop it…"

"Rory, you're scaring me…" Tears were flowing silently down Amy's cheeks, and she reached out to Rory, even though he pulled back.

"Rory, don't listen to it! Listen to us! You can fight this!" The Doctor froze, feeling a malignant form of energy pressing down on the house, feeling Something building in anticipation. He grabbed his sonic screwdriver, determined to get some sort of scan from Rory, determined to find an answer, a solution, because he had left them here to save them – this was not meant to happen!

But then Rory bowed his head, his knuckles white on his biceps as his arms clenched about himself, his whole body shaking. And then it stopped, and his shoulders slumped, and in a choked gasp, two words tumbled from Rory's mouth, "P-praise H-him…"

Amy reeled backwards, "What? Doctor!"

"No. No, that's impossible. That's gone. Rory didn't even have a room-"

"He who lacks a room, may yet still have an attic."

The Doctor whirled around, dragging Amy to her feet and backwards with him to face the stranger leaning against the fridge, at the same time, effectively blocking Rory from the newcomer's view.

"What have you done to my husband?" Amy yelled, her full fiery anger directed at the dark-haired man, only fuelled by his casual coolness. She knew this was the man who had spoken to Rory earlier. He looked ordinary, human, but she had seen too much to take things on face value.

"Such beauty of the soul, as well as the visage. I can see why you helped him resist it all so. Not lust, but love. How quaint."

"What attic?" The Doctor's voice was low and dangerous. Rory had come to mean as much to him as Amy, and he would not allow this enemy to win whatever game he thought they were playing.

"Why, the one in his head, of course." The man laughed.

Amy blinked, "From when he was plastic..?"

"Oh, no, child. From before that. From before your love pulled him away from us. From before you love saved him." He sneered with contempt, his eyes raking over Amy, flicking with brief distain to the Timelord.

"Stop talking in riddles." The Doctor snapped, "I'm losing my patience."

The man laughed again, sweeping his lank hair back from his face, "Such command! I can see why he placed so much faith in you once. It is almost poetic that you might be the weapon of destruction the second time, when you were a salvation for the first."

He easily approached, and Amy made to stop him from getting any closer to Rory, only to fall straight through him. The Doctor blinked critically, sweeping a hand through where the man's neck was, only to meet air, "What are you? What do you want with Rory?"

The man ignored them, instead crouching next to Rory and, much to the anger of Amy and the Doctor, placed a gentle hand on Rory's shoulder, "Your time is spent, my dear friend. You cannot hide any longer. Praise Him, and what He saved you to be. You cannot presume to hide in what is an age ago dead for any longer. Rory Williams died long before you even met me, you know this to be true; you just need to let the lies fall away. Be who He moulded you to be." Rory was shaking visibly now, but he raised his head to meet the man's eyes as he hypnotically carded a hand through Rory's hair. And then, in a lilting voice that spoke in a way that sparked recognition in Rory's eyes, the man continued in words that sounded as if he had spoken them before, "The stars move still. Time runs. The clock will strike."

"Like Hell it will! Get off my husband!" Amy solved the problem of the untouchable – alien? – by bodily wrenching Rory out of his grip.

As if snapping out of a daze, Rory blinked up at his wife, "Amy?"

And then the man screamed inhumanly, and the trio were thrown back as the kitchen was set on fire, "You sent me begging to Hell, regardless whether you chose to or were forced! In the end, there is no difference, and I will do the same for you! As you once said so well – we do love company."

Amy curled away from the flames, and despite his terror and defeat at the entire situation, Rory couldn't help his instinct to protect her, throwing his arms around her body in a futile attempt to stave off the licking fire.

And then the Doctor was standing tall and strong amidst the smoke and the flames and the red and the screams, between them and the man Rory wished he could forget.

Déjà vu-

An alien planet, an utter trust, a belief, a love and a faith.

Déjà vu-

Further back, a bombing, an obsidian box, a knowledge of waiting, a knowledge that he would come for them.

Déjà vu-

A world and eternity of pain. Amy. Love. The Doctor. Faith. The tiniest glimmer in his heart, that infinitesimal possession that He could never take away.

Love and Faith. The two things that made Rory's world turn. Amy and The Doctor.

The attic trapdoor slammed shut with a wrench and a pain; so, so much pain. Bolted by two untouchable concepts as something lost was restored. One cannot work without the other. Two cannot spin without the third.

He felt the hatred and the jealousy, he felt the anger and the sheer malevolence, but he also felt safe.

Rory passed out, the flames died, the man was gone, and an eternity away, He screamed at what he had lost a second time. Because a Timelord and a soulmate stood fast in the way.

Rory stirred, his entire body feeling like it had been turned inside out and back again. "Well, hello there sleepy head." The voice above him was soft and familiar.

Rory opened his eyes to see the Doctor relaxing in a chair next to his bed. Beside him in another chair was Amy, except his wife was slumped forwards asleep, her hand clasped tight with Rory's even as she dreamt, "What happened..?" He surprised himself with how croaky his voice was.

"You never told me there was something else behind your door other than that Roman." The Doctor replied sadly; regret lacing his tone, "I'm sorry you didn't trust me enough."

Rory frowned, "I did… I do…I just… I don't know what you're talking about." He averted his eyes, unable at that last crucial moment to admit the truth.

"Yes you do, Mephistopheles." The Doctor refuted quietly.

"Don't call me that!" Rory hissed, hurt and fear lacing his tone as his gaze snapped back up to the Doctor's.

"I'm sorry. That really was cruel of me." He sounded honestly apologetic, "But I had to know if I was right in my guess of who that man – or creature now I suppose – was. A lost soul…"

"Faustus." Rory acknowledged the name of his friend quietly.

"Marlowe's tale isn't just from Earth, you know? He and Shakespeare, they were something special. Wordsmiths who wrote beyond the simple dictionary and thesaurus. They wrote the very soul of the universe. They also often wrote more than just a kernel of truth. Of a creature. A creature told in the legends of Timelords and even older civilisations. An entity from before writing itself. I always wondered why it hated me so much…"

"What?"

"I met it. Crossed over timelines. You knew it before I did, but I knew it when I was younger. I think it truly hated me, because I stopped it from getting you." He sighed tiredly, "It was in the Crack, wasn't it?"

"Do we have to talk about it?" Rory mumbled.

"Will you talk to Amy about it?"

"No." He knew this to be true. He couldn't tell her about that time, about what he had been forced to be. Because in some sick twist of the universe's humour, Rory and the Doctor had ended up being the old ones, the damaged ones, while Amy remained young and whole.

"Then, yes, we do. But not right now. Now, I think we need tea. Tea, and a very quiet adventure."

Rory quirked an eyebrow, and couldn't help but let a laugh escape him. It warmed him, curling through his body like a tonic. It woke Amy, who had apparently been on the cusp of wakefulness anyway, because she grumbled, "Since when do you do quiet?"

The Doctor huffed, a sparkle returning to his eyes, reaching forwards to ruffle Rory's hair in a gesture of affection so different from Faustus' before it, "Fine, we'll just hang out in space for a bit. The TARDIS misses you both. Honestly, she's been a nightmare to live with. Nag, nag, nag. I'm certain I've rescued more people since I dropped you two off than I did in three of my lives! I think she's trying to keep me busy."

"Sounds good." Amy smiled softly, moving to perch on the side of Rory's bed, wanting to be in as much physical contact with the man she had nearly lost as possible.

The nebula the TARDIS hung over shone with a celestial twilight, and Rory found himself alone, sitting with his legs dangling out of her doors into space, looking out into the expanse. Amy had fallen asleep in their old bedroom a few hours ago, after a long conversation in which Rory successfully skirted around more than one issue, and Amy swore rather a lot, creating many imaginative ways of harming the man who had come to their house.

He felt odd, but not in a bad way. Like something had changed, like the Faith and Love that bolted the attic shut with padlocks and chains had done so in a different way. But he had both, and this helped keep the memories locked away, to the point where he had to struggle to recall they even existed. He knew that in the morning, he would wake to forget completely that he had spent time in the Crack at all.

Until it mattered.

Rory thought of Faustus, and felt pity. He had tried to dissuade him, so many times… but there had only been so much he could do, and in the end, we are all our own minds.

The colours twisted and puffed in a brilliant display before him, and nearly unconsciously, Rory cupped his chilled hands. An instant, and tiny flames licked merrily in his fingers. He blinked, and they winked out.

He blinked again, and he forgot.

The Doctor didn't. He only nodded with a sad smile, and silently left Rory in peace.

FIN

Author Notes: Still with me? I'd love to hear any thoughts you have. Feedback gives me cyber hugs :D