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Rory knew a thing or two about a thing or two.
He knew about medicine. He knew a whole lot about Manchester United, a good bit about Star Wars — space really wasn’t anything like it was in the films — and he just so happened to know a great deal about patience.
He knew that being patient wasn’t necessarily the virtue everyone seemed to think it was; when patient was the only thing left for someone to be, it had the nasty habit of becoming just that — a nasty habit. He didn’t mind waiting for anything, ever. In fact, he sort of preferred it. If you wait long enough — like 2,000 years — you really don’t feel the need to hassle the waiter for your fish and chips, and you really never get all huffy when the bus is running behind schedule.
But he also waited out the things he ought to rush into; he took his time when there wasn’t time left to take. He didn’t feel hurried to fix up little things around the house. So what if the gaskets in the shower leaked? So what if the bulb in the attic burnt out? They didn’t use the attic, anyhow. He didn’t push for promotions at work, even though he was the best damn nurse in the casualty ward. He just figured that if he was only patient for a little while longer, it would all fall into place.
And it hadn’t. And, he supposed, that’s why he was working late on a warm summer night when he could’ve been out with Amy — that is, if he wasn’t “sleeping on the couch,” or so to speak.
She’d told him that he was standing in line waiting for his life to start. He’d told her that life wasn’t a race. They were both right in some ways and wrong and others, but right and wrong never seemed to matter much in the midst of a lover’s quarrel. What mattered, then, was mutual understanding, a little compassion, and a commitment to forgiveness.
But Rory had opted instead to stay long after his shift had ended filing paperwork at the hospital, and Amy hadn’t questioned why. She knew. Rory figured he’d just wait for her to come around. But then again, that’s all he seemed to do — wait.
He was sorting through a folder at the admin desk when the yellow lights overhead of him gave a little flicker.
“Damn wiring,” griped Jeanie, the secretary. A fierce Northerner with a penchant for complaining, Jeanie had been working at Leadworth Hospital since before Rory was born, and at the rate she was aging — or rather, not aging — she’d probably be there long after he’d died. Not much in the world was forever, but Jeanie was as permanent a fixture in Gloucestershire as Dyrham Park or the Severn bore.
“Dr. Benton called maintenance, I think,” he muttered absently.
“You know how maintenance can be,” she grumbled. “Here we are in A&E with flickering lights! If the power goes out, it takes some time to switch over to the generator, and we’ve got patients on machines!”
“Yeah,” Rory agreed without paying her much mind. He’d heard something: the faint, electric and strangely temporal sizzle that usually meant only one thing. One curly-haired, wild-eyed thing.
There was a little storage corridor tucked back behind the suture room, and through the frosted glass, he could see that its lights were still blinking on and off. There was certainly something familiar about it.
She wouldn’t come here, he thought. She’d go to her mum. If the doctors got a hold of her and found two hearts hammering away in her chest, she’d probably be kidnapped by MI6 and shipped off to the Americans for experimentation in Area 51, or something like that. Whatever 21st-century people did with things they didn’t understand, they’d do to her. Maybe it was the father in him that worried, or maybe it was the pessimist, or the egoist who never thought anyone else could ever understand the universe quite like he did. No matter what it was, it pulled him forward toward the hall.
“Are you even listening?” Jeanie called after him.
“Yeah, I’ll be back,” Rory told her. “Just need to...check something.”
Through the doors to the suture room, in the small little passage that led only to a supply cupboard, a figure had appeared out of thin air — or rather, he’d learned, out of the Time Vortex — and she was currently rummaging boxes and stuffing her brassiere with medical supplies.
Rory cleared his throat.
River Song startled, turning to face him with a muffled gasp. She was prepared with an arsenal of excuses, but when she saw that it was Rory who’d caught her red-handed, she only smiled.
“Hello, daddy dearest, fancy meeting you here!” she teased. Rory noted that she was doing a very good job pretending that she wasn’t bleeding and covered in mud.
“River, what happened to you?” he reached out to her, pulling her away from her little heist. “You look like hell.”
“Hell is hot, at least,” she remarked. “And besides, you look a little battered yourself.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“You could tuck the whole of London in those bags under your eyes.”
“Like father, like daughter,” he guided her to sit down, retrieving a suture kit from the shelf. He knew her well enough by now to know that this was a younger version; she was erratic and impulsive, extremely clever and quick as a whip. But she lacked the refined nature she’d stumble into in adulthood; she looked older than him, now, but for a Proto-Time Lord with an augmented life span, things were a bit different. If you scaled it all down into human terms, the woman sitting before him would barely be old enough for a driving license, and when he looked at her, all he saw was his little girl.
“This isn’t necessary, really,” River told him. “I just came to borrow a few supplies. I can take care of myself, you know.”
“I know,” Rory smiled, dabbing a damp cloth gently at the dirt on her cheek. She winced. “But that’s the thing about families, River; when you’ve got one, you don’t have to take care of yourself all the time.”
She was silent, a pout at her lips, but Rory knew if she didn’t want him to fuss over her, she wouldn’t let him within arm’s distance. She wouldn’t have come here at all. She wasn’t very good at communicating verbally what she needed — especially not when she’s this young — but it was a father’s duty to know how to interpret quietness, and to know how to read actions that so often spoke louder than words ever could.
“You’ve got a nasty cut on your arm,” he told her.
“Yeah,” she laughed. “You should see the other guy.”
Rory shone a light into her eyes. Satisfied with the way her pupils reacted just as they ought to react, he ruled out a head injury, and felt a heavy tension ease its way out of his shoulders.
“What happened to you, love? Someone hurt you?”
He’d sworn off space travel for awhile, but if he had to fly off to Mars or whatever to teach some tough guy some manners — or to shove those manners where the sun didn’t shine — he’d be on his way within the hour.
“Just got into a little spat,” she shrugged, dismissive. “There’s a colony of androids guarding this tomb on Andromeda. I wanted to know what the big deal was. Ancient god? Old mummy? Secret laboratory?”
“Did you find out?” Rory dabbed some alcohol onto the rag and gingerly pressed it against the jagged cut on River’s forearm. She hissed in pain. To keep her focus away from the sting, Rory continued. “Hey, what’s in the tomb, River? Can’t leave me hanging on a story like that.”
“I never got to find out,” she took a deep breath. “Fell down a hillside.”
“Ah,” he smiled fondly. “You’ve got your father’s grace.”
“Tripped an alarm, and next I knew, intergalactic police were after me! I reckon it’s alright now, though,” she read his exasperation, giggling at his piqued irritation.
“You’ve got your father’s grace,” he repeated. “And your mother’s moxie.”
“Don’t be so serious, Father,” she dismissed him with a shrug. “I sent those ol’ officers running. Flashed my Vortex Manipulator. They’d never seen anything like it. Gave ‘em a proper scare!”
“Where’d you get a thing like that?” he gestured to the kit, fitting a bit loose on her wrist.
“Same way I got these gauze and...what are these?” she pulled some alcoholic wipes out of her shirt. Rory snatched them back and put them on the shelf. He was beginning to wonder if this might’ve been the youngest version of her he’d ever met — the whole Mels thing aside. She acted just like her, though; all energy, no focus, all fire, no smoke.
“You’re going to make me go grey if you keep pulling stuff like this,” Rory tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and she smiled up at him.
“You’re already going grey!”
“Oi!” he laughed. “Watch it, kiddo. Anyone ever tell you not to tease the guy holding the needle?”
He prepped the lidocaine, and River’s eyes went wide.
“You’re not going to stab me with that, are you?”
“I’m afraid so,” he offered an apologetic smile. “It won’t hurt much.”
“You can’t lie to a liar,” River tried to stand up, but Rory put a hand on her shoulder.
“I wouldn’t hurt you, River. Not ever. I’m your dad. Dads don’t hurt their kids.”
The mischievous laughter gone from her eyes, she suddenly looked quite small. Mums do sometimes, she wanted to say, because Kovarian had hurt her so very much. She’d made her feel as small as she looked.
But Rory wasn’t Kovarian; he was warm and he was kind, but he was also just unhinged enough to make him fun, and she trusted him the moment they’d met. She was a lot like him, she figured. At least, she wanted to be.
“Right,” she said after awhile. “Get on with it, then.”
“That’s my girl,” he praised. As he pressed the needle into her cut, he kept talking. “You know, River, there’s a song that makes me think of you whenever it comes on the radio.”
“It better be a good song,” she muttered through grit teeth. “This hurts like the devil, you know!”
“It’s called Vienna by Billy Joel. Good ol’ fashioned rock ‘n roll.”
“I always took you for more of a jazz guy. Or that loud, electronic stuff weird guys listen to in clubs.”
Ignoring her quip — insult-based humour had always been her coping mechanism — Rory went on.
“It goes, Slow down, you crazy child. You're so ambitious for a juvenile. But then if you're so smart, then tell me, why are you still so afraid?”
River giggled. “You’re a rubbish singer, Father.”
“Where's the fire, what's the hurry about? You'd better cool it off before you burn it out. You've got so much to do, and only so many hours in a day,” Rory sang on, theatrical and silly. River had long forgotten the needle’s brief sting, her attention turned instead to Rory’s tune.
“You’re embarrassing yourself!” she laughed.
“Nope,” corrected Rory, threading a needle through her newly numbed wound. She didn’t seem to notice. “I’m only embarrassing you. Slow down, you're doing fine. You can't be everything you want to be before your time.” He forgot a few words, and so he hummed out-of-tune nothings for a few bars.
He was aware of the irony; he’d been lamenting how much of a curse patience was, and then he turned around and told River she ought to be in less of a hurry. Maybe there was a happy medium, caught someplace between a chaotic youngster and an immobilised old grouch. Rory was asking her to find that middle ground, that golden mean, and secretly, he was hoping she’d show him where it is.
“It's a nice song," River watched with fascination as Rory sutured her arm. She couldn't feel a thing. Maybe Earth medicine wasn't as primitive as she'd thought. "How's Mum?" He looked up from his work just long enough to make sure she still seemed alright.
“Oh, she’s great,” he said. “She’d be happy to see you. You should stop by. I’m sure she’ll make you whatever food you’d like.”
River shrugged. “I’m not very hungry.”
“You didn’t work up an appetite running from all those space police?”
She snorted. “I must’ve dropped it in the pile of sharp rocks I fell into.”
“I suppose that’s fair enough,” he chuckled. “How’s the Doctor?”
Silence. Immediately, he knew he’d said the wrong thing.
“I’m sorry, River, I didn’t--”
“No, no, it’s alright,” she shook her head. “Just haven’t seen him in a little while. I think he’s forgotten about me.”
“You’re not exactly forgettable,” Rory assured her. She’d come by their house last Guy Fawkes Night — maybe it was next Guy Fawkes Night for her — and she’d tried to set off some of her own homemade fireworks. And by “homemade fireworks,” she’d essentially meant “pipe bombs.” The neighbours to the left lost their favourite rose bush, and the ones to the right lost their least favourite cat. Both still chatted about it every time they had the chance.
“I know that,” River replied, self-assured. “But the Doctor, Father, he’s like...he’s like a supernova, or something. I don’t know. Something larger than life, something destructive, something beautiful. A rare sort. But no matter how much you watch stars die, not a single one will use its final breath to tell you how much it loves you. Its love — or its lack thereof — it’s like a terrible secret it takes with it to the grave. I fear the Doctor’s like that, too. So explosive, so grand, so silent. And why would a star ever love a girl like me in the first place?”
Rory tied off the final stitch, giving River’s hand a gentle pat. “Humpty Dumpty, you’re all put back together again.”
There were stubborn tears in her eyes that refused to fall, but as she tried to blink them back, her lips trembled — and Rory’s heart broke.
“Alright, alright, c’mere,” he pulled her into a hug. Her head settled into a crook against his shoulder, her arms finding their way back around him, too. This, he figured, is why she came. She could’ve gone to any old hospital to steal some Band-Aids. But she’d come to Leadworth, because she knew she had a father somewhere in its walls who would be more than ready to give her the hug she never quite knew how to ask for. Emotion swelled inside him like a great big balloon, pressing warmly against the walls of his chest and filling up his throat with a heavy lump.
“Love is complicated, especially between two time travelers,” he told her, giving her a gentle squeeze. “But don’t you dare think for a moment that you aren’t worth it.”
Yes, this River was very, very young; she was fresh from the throes of a brainwashed cult, only just beginning to understand that she owned her thoughts and feelings, and that no one in the universe could ever take them from her. He wondered what it was like, to bottle up all that guilt and resentment and horror. He wondered if she ever dreamt, and if she did, if Kovarian’s cruelty ever turned sweet slumbers into nightmares.
He made a mental note to find her someday — Kovarian — and wreak havoc on her life. Just for fun. (River didn’t get all her grit from her, after all.)
River’s tough-gal facade had fallen to dust at her feet, and beneath it, she was frightened. Rory was flying blind; he wasn’t ever good with this stuff. Amy was the one who could speak lines of poetry and make them sound real. Rory could barely read a grocery list without sounding insincere. But he let his heart drive him — he did not wait patiently for the right words to come, and he didn’t wait patiently for the right time to say them. He dove right in.
“Don’t you dare think that you aren’t worth the work it takes to love someone else, and don’t you dare think that you don’t deserve all the joy, the wonder, and the comfort of being loved, River,” He ran his fingers gently through her hair, but when his wedding band caught in her curls, he realised just how far in over his head he was. He managed to tug his hand free without much to-do. “It’s not like the films. Nothing’s like the films, you know. Not love, not life. You can’t...you can’t wait around for someone to prove to you that you’re worth it, okay? You just have to know that you are, and that the right person — maybe that’s the Doctor, maybe it’s not — will know it, too.”
She pulled away from Rory just enough to wipe her nose on the back of her sleeve, eyes cast down at the floor. Stiffly, she nodded.
“Thank you, Father,” she held up her sutured arm. “For putting me back together.”
“Thank you,” he smiled affectionately. “For letting me.”
“I should be going,” she sniffled once more and slid down out of her seat. Laughter had inched its way back into her eyes, and the momentary lapse in control had vanished as quickly as it had come. Rory let himself believe — perhaps self-indulgently — that it was all because he took a chance, stopped waiting patiently, and said the right thing.
“Why don’t you stay a little while?” he suggested, causing her to pause in her tracks. “I have to remove those stitches in a few days. It might be best for your medical well-being if we let time move in a straight line until then.”
River seemed stunned at the suggestion.
“I’d hate to impose.”
“You wouldn’t. We’ve got an attic we don’t use for much; you could sleep there. I’ve been meaning to fix the light, but I’ll buy a bulb on my way home.”
A faint smile came to her lips, and she did her best to keep it hidden. “I suppose, if it’s a question of my medical wellbeing, I ought not argue with a nurse.”
“A clever decision,” Rory played along. “And your mother’s been looking for help weeding the garden. I tried, but she told me I pulled the roots out too hard.”
River laughed. “That sounds just like Mum.”
“C’mon,” Rory put an arm around her shoulders, guiding her out toward the exit. As they passed the admin desk, he felt Jeanie’s eyes on his back.
“You know she’s alien, right?” River nodded back toward the desk as the automatic doors slid open, letting in a breath of summer air.
Rory’s jaw went slack.
“What?”
“The secretary. She’s an alien.” A grin split her cheeks. “You didn’t know? Men are so unobservant! She’s 104, and she doesn’t look a day over 40!”
“How do you know that!?”
“I’ve met her before.”
“Where!?” Rory was laughing, too. Nothing startled him anymore, but he certainly wasn’t immune to surprises.
River grinned as she slipped into the passenger seat of her father’s car.
“Spoilers.”