Doctor Who fic: Better
Title: Better
Author: 
sarah531
Rating: PG13
Characters: Amy, Rory
Spoilers: For A Town Called Mercy
Summary: Amy and Rory find themselves in a moral quandary.
Better
Amy and Rory were shown to their room by a curly-haired blonde who looked a little like River. Both parents noted this, but didn’t speak of it.
“You’re sleeping on the floor,” Amy told Rory. “You’re not even on the list of people I wanna be near right now!”
“Why?”
“Because apparently I’m surrounded by- by- cold-blooded killers!”
“How can you say that?” And Rory meant it: in two thousand years he’d never killed anyone. Some people barely made it to twenty. “Amy!”
“Okay, fine, that came out wrong,” Amy’s voice softened a little. “But you and the Doctor would have let that man be killed. It wasn’t right and you know it.”
“It was to save everyone!” Rory said. Although he’d known this conversation was coming it didn’t make it any easier. “That guy was…Amy, he was basically Dr Mengele! You can’t say you’d put hundreds of life at risk to save one murdering psychopath!”
“It’s not about one person, it’s about morals, about being better than him-”
“Amy, he killed loads of people and wasn’t even sorry! There’s pretty much nothing you or I or the Doctor could have done to be worse than him!”
The mention of the Doctor caused Amy to pause. Rory knew what she was thinking about, and she knew he knew. The memories were agony.
“You’re much stronger than me,” Rory finally said. “You know that.”
“Shut up,” Amy answered, her eyes far away.
“I know he reminded you of Kovarian, but you don’t have to-”
“I killed someone!” Amy snapped. “I killed someone and I remember it every day! It’s alright for you, you barely even remember it!”
“I barely even remember lots of things,” Rory countered. “But I know, I would know no matter what, that you only killed her because-.”
“I’m a murderer, Rory!”
“Anyone would have done the same thing you did. Any parent.”
“Would you?”
Rory paused just a little too long. That pause angered Amy immensely- was he thinking he was a better person than her? “You know the Doctor might just, just rock up one day and decide I’m one of those people he shouldn’t show mercy to! You know that, right? Whose side would you be on then, you stupid face?”
Rory winced. It had happened before- in those long dark weeks when Amy seemed to hate both him and herself- but he never got used to the term of endearment being used as an insult. “I’d be on your side. I’m always on your side.”
“Except for today.”
“Amy, you know we don’t always see eye-to-eye on things. Like the Gangers…”
“Yeah, and we know where that got us!”
And Rory winced once more. “I just…couldn’t care about that man. He’s a monster. I’m sorry, okay?”
“You’re a nurse! If a mass-murdering criminal was there in the hospital needing medical treatment, you’d help him, wouldn’t you?” She paused. “Or her.”
“I-”
No-one said anything for a few seconds, they both felt equally guilty, angry and sad. Finally Rory said, “I’m not really a nurse anymore.”
“It says ‘nurse’ on your payslip.”
“It’s not really the same thing. It’s still my job, I still love doing it, but I don’t feel like I am it anymore. Basically,” and he looked everywhere but her, “I’d say I’m about as much a nurse, now, as the Doctor is a doctor.”
Amy went to the window and looked out at the night, a thing she’d done many times before. She leaned heavily on the windowsill, her hair covering her eyes, and in that moment she looked like a much older woman. “This is pointless, isn’t it?” she said. “I don’t want to argue and it’s not like we can actually do anything to change things.”
Rory went to Amy and put his hand on her shoulder, and she didn’t shake it off. “We’ve changed so many things. You’ve changed so many things. For the better. You know that, right?”
“I’m still a killer.”
“I would be too, if I met that woman, after everything she did to you and our baby,” Rory said. “I was stopping to think back then because…because…” He looked away. “Because I’d have done it worse. You were merciful. She’d have almost certainly died anyway, you just didn’t help her. I’d have made her suffer, Amy, I’d have shot her in the stomach and let her bleed out.” Amy looked at him with tears in her eyes. “Someone came into the hospital with a wound like that, on my second day of work. Gun accident on a farm. And he died, and it was horrible, the first death I ever saw. D’ya remember me telling you about that…telling you and Mels about that?” Amy nodded. “That’s what I’d have done to her. That’s what I still would do to her.”
“You’d have to get in line,” Amy said softly. And her hands unconciously drifted to her stomach.
“I know.”
Amy crossed to the bed and gestured for Rory to sit next to her. “He makes us better, doesn’t he? God, I hope so.”
“He’s the Doctor. He does. But I bet he couldn’t do it without you.”
Things weren’t alright and they probably never would be, but they slept the night together.
September 22, 2012 @ 2:14 am
Oh, ouch. They did seem very tense in that episode, and it makes a lot of sense that they’d have been fighting like this behind the scenes, as it were. Poor Amy and Rory. They have a lot of guilt and pain to carry around. At least they have each other to share it with. Nice story. And that woman really did look an awful lot like River.
September 22, 2012 @ 10:34 am
They did! They barely touched! :O Thank you. ;) She looked so much like River, I thought it was her when the trailer with her in it first came out…
September 24, 2012 @ 4:05 pm
Wow. Nice moment, very real. And I wouldn’t think much about the resemblance to River, after all, piled curls was a common hairstyle, saucy was aprt of the saloon girl trope, but – the eyebrows! They were plucked in the same arch as River’s. That can’t be coincidence, although it might be just a joke between that evil Moffat and the costume department.
September 24, 2012 @ 11:49 pm
Everyone thought that was River in the leaked ComicCon trailer- darn you, costume department! *shakes fist* And, thank you. ;)