Chapter Text
…
…
“Throw me in. I’m a complex time-space event.”
He twisted to stare at her. “You cannot be serious.” Her dying all agleam flickered in his mind's eye.
She blinked at him, unenlightened. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“No. Absolutely not!”
“If you don’t –“
“I don’t care! The last thing I’m going to allow is for you to pop out of existence. Seen quite enough that lately, thanks.” He didn’t count the half-life he’d left her; he wanted her to live, fully.
She didn't pry. “All right, then. Have you got a better plan?”
He winked for a shock. “Haven’t I always?”
“Not in my experience, no.”
“Well, you’re no fun," he rejoined with a prime scowl.
“You’re about all the fun I can handle.”
“Handle me often, do you?”
“Oh, shut up," she snapped, but she was grinning despite herself as she turned away.
…
Now that he knew what to feel for, the Doctor had no trouble sensing River standing before him. He could see her easily, of course, but to feel her as he felt his kin was magical, a balm of sorts on his weary spirits. He knew that this woman would be heroic one day—someone who died in the name of four thousand others could only be that—yet to wanted her to be that brilliant now. He wanted the story he and the Master had failed to write together.
“Can I trust you, River Song?”
“If you like. But where’s the fun in that?”
Behave, he found himself telling her just because he could.
How boring.
Oh, he was going to like her.
~!~
“Hello, sweetie.”
She scowled, striking even dressed as Cleopatra, “That’s supposed to be my line.”
“Your line’s been etched on the oldest rock face in history. I think it’s safe to say it’s going to be stolen a lot from here on.”
“It took you entirely too long to get here.” She dismissed her guards with a sulky wave.
“You could have written a note.”
“I did,” she teased. He so loved it when she teased.
“Oh, yes, you did. Bit much though.”
She shrugged. “Did what I needed it to.”
“I’ll say.” He strode over and squeezed onto the chaise at her side. “Got any extra fruit—but no apples! Dreadful things, those.”
She shuffled aside to make room for him. “This is not how I imagined this meeting going.”
“Story of my life.” He tapped her nose and stole a sliver of honeydew melon from her platter. “Delicious melons you’ve got there, Doctor.”
She covered her kohl-lined eyes—and her cleavage. “Please, shut up.”
“Not a chance.”
…
He addressed his foes boldly, confident in his chances at victory with her and the Ponds at his back.
“Think about what you’re doing and do the smart thing: let someone else go first.”
“You are an idiot,” hissed River, sounding not a little overawed at his temerity. It was like she didn’t know him at all.
“And you are our legacy.”
To that, she said nothing.
“Promise me that you won’t let anyone forget us.” He knew that she would soon go to her death, but to be remembered even that much longer meant the world.
“You’ll never be forgotten.”
He turned to brush his fingers against her cheek. “Neither will you.”
“Oh, Doctor, forgotten is all I ever am.”
More fool the universe, he thought. She was the most unforgettable Song of all.
…
…
“My fool.” She cuffed him sharply on the ear, knocking his top hat askew. He was dressed to dance and she dressed to stun. Only one of them appeared to be succeeding at present.
“My hero,” he retorted, gleeful that she was all he had hoped she would be.
“Amy Pond saved you. I just reminded her to do it.”
He grasped her wrist in his hand to repeat, “My hero.”
She leaned up and kissed him ever so softly on the corner of his mouth. “My wonderful burden.” She released him, only to vanish in a flash of benign light.
~!~
All that she was whizzed through him before he opened the door. She was a supernova of roiling emotion out there. He couldn’t have missed her less if she’d purposely thrown up a beacon.
He tossed open the door to the gents’ to see the Ponds and River looking downtrodden. They came to face him with identical looks of disbelief. This is cruel, even by your standards, bounded on lips and hearts.
Amelia approached him first, her sweet face a mask of unspoken hurt. She circled him and he could only follow her progress as he tried to work out what had left them all this wounded. He pulled her into his arms when he could stand the lost expression on her face no longer.
Rory was equally incredulous. River was furious, though she’d immediately tamped down on those emotions when he’d arrived. Some of it slipped when her hand met his cheek with the force of a small asteroid crash.
“I’m assuming that’s for something I haven’t done yet.”
“Yes.”
He wanted very much to say sorry, but he couldn’t bring himself to regret whatever it was that had dragged that last bit of storm into her eyes. He doubted anyone else could feel it, the heightened static in the air or the spark in her motion. It was no human spark. Nothing about her ever had been.
And he had brought it out.
…
He tried his luck, spoke their language. Just a few words, enough for recognition. Her expression didn’t waiver, but she swallowed, quiet and quick.
He grinned and brushed her mind again.
“Argh!” Fool me twice, shame on me.
She smirked. “Hasn’t anyone every told you to watch what you touch?”
“It does have the ring of familiarity, yes.”
“You should have listened to them.”
“That’s become abundantly clear to me.”
With a put-upon sigh, she came to him and gathered his head between her hands. They were cooler than he would have imagined, cooler than before. The thought melted away in the face of a new heat in his mind, her spark flaring to soothe his psychic shock.
“Hurts,” he pouted.
She kissed his cheek. “It will pass.”
He didn’t want it to.
…
What secrets are you keeping? Why have you pulled the Ponds into it?
When she didn’t answer, he endeavoured to put an end to their telepathic play. She couldn’t be trusted; he’d always known that, Time Lord or not.
His boycott endured exactly as long it took for him to tire of the solitude in his head. All of time and space vying for attention, but he wanted her there as well.
He reached for her and she reached back, not a single question answered and few more asked.
…
Her laughter blew a pleasant wind in back of his mind, which would have been decidedly enjoyable were he not presently being pinned by a half-dozen alarmed U.S. Secret Service agents.
“River, make her blue again!”
Bless, she giggled, and did as he asked.
He slipped away from the suited gentlemen to occupy what was inarguably, in this era, the most powerful seat on Earth. He got a face full of gun barrels for his feat. I’d have preferred a blue ribbon, alas…
“Fellas, the guns, really? I’ve just walked into the highest-security office in the United States, parked a big blue box on the rug. You think you can just shoot me—”
You idiot! “They’re Americans,” she reminded him as she lunged out of the TARDIS doors.
He shot up, hands up, because, yes, yes they were.
“Don’t shoot, definitely no shooting.”
“No need to shoot us, either. Very much not in need of getting shot,” Rory declared as he and Amy followed. They all stood about, arms raised in a collective effort not to draw ‘friendly’ fire.
All the president’s men were as confused and vexed as the man himself. He doesn’t even know what a police box is. How can he not know? He tried not to laugh at River’s answering volley about the American education system. It was a near thing. Behave!
He decided it was high time he introduced himself lest he invoke a firing squad. It was no less than he expected given all the mystery.
“I’m your new undercover agent, on loan from Scotland Yard, codename: the Doctor. These are my top operatives: the Legs, the Nose, and Mrs. Robinson.”
River hissed in his direction, “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
Willing to bet your life on it? Her presence was a teasing, if stern, pinch on the wrist.
He pouted once more but carried on.
…
“Doctor Song, you’ve got that face on again.”
“What face?”
“The ‘he’s hot when he’s clever’ face.” He rather liked this expression, she wore it so well.
“This is my normal face.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Oh, shut up.” She scoffed at him and passed him to leave the room. A tendril of affection tickled his proverbial ribs. He did so love it when she decided to play.
He followed her departure with his eyes. “Not a chance.”
He liked to repeat himself sometimes, because when a line worked it really worked. He got a psychic slap on the backside in reward, and he flushed.
…
“Shout if you get in trouble.”
“Don’t worry, I’m quite the screamer.” She spared him a flirtatious glance on the way down the utility shaft, “Now, there’s a spoiler for you.”
The Doctor budged his bowtie and pretended—quite ably, he thought—that he hadn’t just been made privy to a shutter quick montage of their future erotic encounters. She was a commendable screamer indeed, and in several languages.
“So, what’s going on here,” Canton asked, now that he’d rejoined the land of the lucid.
“Uh, nothing,” the Doctor piped up. “She’s just a friend.” And if he was considering pushing the boundaries of that friendship to see if she would shout in Gallifreyan, well, that was just idle curiosity and nothing more, really.
…
Without attempting to touch her psychically, he broadcasted, We have to save Amelia.
She responded, with impressive certitude, We will. She was fine-tuning her Alpha Meson pistol as they spoke…thought, communed?
Her smirk filtered across the narrow psychic channel that had grown between them.
Don’t laugh. I’m out practice with this. There weren’t exactly an excess of Time Lords with whom he could have telepathic conversation anymore.
Her sorrow came across as well, a tone of finality accompanying the words: I know.
She didn’t speak to him that way again that day. Not that he blamed her, even the shade of Amelia’s hair made him think of Gallifrey.
When it was time, she killed all the Silence present on the ship. Did so quite efficiently if Rory’s tale was to be believed.
You bad, bad girl.
You love it.
Kind of do, a bit.
She kissed him at the door of her cell at their adventure’s end and he was…shocked? Not so much as she was, he knew. After he’d ambled off in complete embarrassment at his performance, he felt the residue of her displeasure, felt blunted ripples of unhappiness touch his mind. She wasn’t broadcasting, then, but she had lost control. He would have liked to comfort her and, if he were a different man, he might have. But he was walking the path of the pacifist nowadays and this was not a battle to be fought. So, he retreated, for strategic reasons.
~!~
He was less gentle than he should have been when he reached out to her before Demon’s Run. He had tried a dozen times and gotten no response. When Rory told him of her refusal, his efforts had become less the probing, needful curiosity of a prospective lover and more the vengeful, careless tugging of an ally scorned. He was forced to remember that, for all their shared escapades, they were no more bosom friends than they were husband and wife. The odd bond they shared had allowed him to forget that tiny, vital fact. They were associates and her abstention had thoroughly dissolved their association as far as he was concerned.
He would not forget.
…
Well, everything fell into place with terrifying clarity in the end. How she was his kind and, yet, so clearly human. How she terrified those they encountered separate from her association with him. How absolutely fierce she was. Why their respective timelines ran so counter to one another. She was a fixed point, which the universe had been waiting to be born. She was his perfect other.
So, now you know. She looked down fondly on the cot that had housed his children after it had housed him in his infancy. He wondered if in their time together it might house others.
Now I know. He wanted to take her hand in the seconds that remained before he had to depart. There were things to do.
Are your questions all answered? She seemed unbothered by his frenzied thinking, despite her mind sitting pat as a barracks. That gave him no hope and none to share. He made the effort to smile for his best friends regardless.
Oh, you know me, I can always think up more questions.
Yes, you can.
You’re my wife, he dared with a sense of wonder.
Am I?
- He would see to it.
She smiled at him. Someday.
I’m going to save your life, he swore only to her. If it was a promise he could not keep, nothing was lost for she already knew. They both did.
She thought and said nothing in reply. He wanted to kiss her in parting all the same. He would have liked to in case he never saw this face again. She would be further away next time.
Goodbye, River Song.
Goodbye, my Doctor.
He straightened his tie. “How do I look?”
She inspected him fondly, for truth and for show. “Amazing.”
~!~
He sailed around the universe in his great ship all aflutter. He searched from one end to the other and never saw her glorious face again. He made a thousand new enemies for love and saved a thousand more innocents in her name. He found himself dragged bound into a lethal dance with a broken child of time whom he didn't know. Her name was Mels Zucker and her sadness haunted him alongside her hatred of him. He only learned the truth when she changed faces and fell.
Clear across time, he whispered for his mate, the version of her he had chosen for himself, Oh, River.
You rang, pet?
You left out a fair bit of detail, dearest.
I haven’t any idea what you mean.
About your life.
What about my life?
I thought I could find you.
You will eventually.
I thought it would be sooner.
If only.
I’m sorry.
It isn’t your fault.
I’m the only one at fault.
She meted out wave after wave of unyielding affection from where she sat imprisoned to where he'd found an end to his search. If regrets were concealed by it, they were well hidden, and he knew better than to look. She made heaven out of ignorance; he couldn’t resist the ease of that bliss. She was his wife, his inhuman spark and she lit the path he'd walk to find her younger, lost self all the way to the end.
Forgive me, he pitched into the ether.
There's nothing to forgive, echoed quietly, easily back.