Archive of Our Own

Title: and by a part of all thy glory live
Author: bendingwind
Notes: [Doctor Who | K+/PG | 463 words]
Characters: River, Rory
Summary: River tells her father everything.

“Do you know who I am yet?” she asks, stepping out of the shadows. Rory jumps, startled, and drops his watering tin.

“I, er, I was just… tidying up a bit…”

She moves further into the light, revealing tired bags beneath her eyes and salt-stained cheeks. His heart sinks for the daughter he so rarely meets.

“Oh, beautiful, what’s wrong?” he asks, opening his arms. She rushes forward into his embrace.

“I was afraid I might have come too early,” she mumbles into his shoulder, “I missed you, Dad.”

“It’s okay,” he says as he strokes her back, grateful that his bewildered stare is hidden behind her curls. He waits for her to speak—she tells him everything, when she’s ready.

After a moment, she pulls away. He leads her to the lawn chairs and they sit, facing each other across a dainty lawn table.

“I broke my promise,” she all but whispers. “I said I wouldn’t leave Stormcage unless he called for me but… I wanted to talk to you.” He notices that her hand is shaking on the table, and lays his own across it.

“I’m sure he would understand,” he says, hoping she can’t sense his lie. Their stories are always touching in the wrong order, their conversations always brushing against secrets she cannot tell him yet.

“He died today,” she explains, a curious mixture of awe and heartbreak twining through her tone. “Not forever, he has a new body, but he’s not… he’s not my Doctor anymore.”

“But he’s still the Doctor,” Rory points out, and he worries immediately that it’s too logical a thing to say.

She lets out a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh, and he instinctually leans closer, ready to hold her if she begins to cry again.

“He is, but he isn’t quite. His voice… it isn’t the same, and he doesn’t laugh the same way when I do something dangerous and his—” she stops as if she barely caught herself. Rory’s ears flush red just considering what she might have been about to say.

“He’s the same man,” Rory says, this time with more conviction. The Doctor is the same man in the same way his little girl is the same, no matter how many bodies she dons. He squeezes her fingers and leans closer. “He’s the same man in the way you are the same woman, no matter how many faces you wear.”

Her eyes flutter closed. “I know, Dad, I know, but… he doesn’t laugh in the same way.”

Rory lifts his other hand and carefully takes her chin in his hand. He waits for her to open her eyes, and when she does, he says: “Neither do you. Everyone grows up some day, River.” And he smiles.

Title: The Talk
Author: bendingwind
Notes: [Doctor Who | K+/PG | 378 words]
Characters: Rory, Eleven
Summary: In which Rory decides to make a few things very clear.

Rory surveys the room with narrowed eyes as he prepares for the approach. Amy is curled up, asleep, in a chair safely on the opposite side of the console room. River is also here, sitting beside Amy and drawing, secretively, in her blue diary. He watches them for a moment and then, with a deep breath, approaches the Doctor.

“Sooo, Doctor,” he says, leaning against the console with a care not to move any switches, levers, buttons, and/or kitchen utensils, “We should, er, talk. About stuff.”

“Stuff, stuff is good, I like stuff…” the Doctor mumbles, peering at something that appears suspiciously like a jumping rope. He adjusts it slightly and Rory decides to barrel on.

“So… you and River…”

He can tell at once that he has the Doctor’s attention by the way the Doctor stiffens and then, very slowly, straightens up to face him.

“Er, what about, erm, me and her?” he asks, scratching his cheek nervously.

“Well, it seems like you two… you know…” The Doctor’s cheek-scratching intensifies. “I just want you to know that I’m okay with you and her, you know—”

The Doctor’s eyes widen with sheer horror. “We’re just friends, honestly!” he says, and he is such a poor liar that Rory can’t help but chuckle.

“Right,” Rory says, because even if he did not raise his daughter he knows her better than anyone. “Don’t worry, Amy and I are okay with it. We figure you might be the only person in the universe even close to good enough for her.”

“Oh… well… that’s… that’s nice,” the Doctor stutters, looking more than slightly flustered.

“But the more important thing is,” and Rory buckles up to take the plunge and leans forward, “if you hurt her I will end you. Got it?”

The Doctor leans back, looking more than a little alarmed. “Oh. Oh! That is… I mean… heh heh… the Last Centurion, of course I wouldn’t mess with your daughter, I—I—”

“Good.” Rory leans in again and pats the Doctor cheerfully on the shoulder before he walks away. If he entertains a tiny smirk, it’s not at all because of the look on the Doctor’s face when he realized his future father-in-law was giving him the talk.

Title: On the Matter of Handcuffs
Author: bendingwind
Notes: [Doctor Who | K+/PG | drabble]
Characters: River, Rory, Amy
Summary: There are some things, Rory feels, that he is better off not knowing.

“What are you taking the handcuffs… for…” Rory clamps his mouth shut as River, on her way out the door after a quick visit, turns to face him.

“What do you think, Dad?” she asks with a smirk and a wink, and he grimaces.

“I didn’t want to know.”

“Then you shouldn’t ask,” she says in her finest sing-song, before twirling around to join the Doctor in the TARDIS.

“Every time,” Rory mumbles as the door clicks shut behind her, “I think I liked ‘spoilers’ better.”

From the living room, Amy cheerfully calls, “Make sure River remembered her handcuffs, Rory!”

Title: look what is best, that best I wish in thee
Author: bendingwind
Notes: [Doctor Who | K+/PG | 160 words]
Characters: Rory, to River.
Summary: The first page of River’s diary contains a letter that she knows by heart.

For my beautiful daughter,

Your mother gave you words when you were just a baby, words that the Doctor says you will always remember. I didn’t get to know you for very long, not when you were little, but I wanted to give you a gift as well.

This is a journal I made for your mother for her tenth birthday, to write down the adventures we had when we played Doctor. You know how she’s not much of the writing type, she never used it at all. She gave it back to me when we were fifteen, I was cross with her for weeks. I spent months making it. My dad helped, he was great with leather stuff… anyway, I want this to be yours now. I didn’t know then what it would mean, this TARDIS-blue journal, but it’s yours now. I already know you will make good use of it.

I love you forever and always, Melody.

Daddy

Title: that I in thy abundance am sufficed
Author: bendingwind
Notes: [Doctor Who | K+/PG | 450 words]
Characters: River, Rory
Summary: This time, he does come to wish her a happy birthday.

He’s waiting in her cell when she arrives, cheerfully flirting with the guard escorting her. Rory makes sure to give the guard his best evil eye as the guard hastily disengages his arm from River’s and locks her back in her cell.

“Er, I trust you’ll be able to get out okay on your own, sir?” the guard asks awkwardly, shifting on the balls of his feet.

“Yeah, I’ll do fine,” Rory says, and the guard practically scampers away. He turns his attention to River and smiles.

“Happy birthday, beautiful.”

“Thank you, Dad,” she says, her eyes scrunching up in that way they do when she’s thrilled. “Mum couldn’t make it this year?”

His mouth twisted slightly. “You know how much she hates it here. She sent you a message on hologram and a present.” He gestures at her bed, littered with several neatly wrapped gifts. “Did the Doctor take you out?”

“Oh, yes!” she says, sitting down on a clean edge of her bed, “We went to the spas on Illïon for the weekend, only there ended up being this nest of Afrax that was growing in the steam vents and they were spreading hypnotic gas and making people riot and all the steam suits had been destroyed so we had to engineer a steam lift to take us down there so that we could relocate the baby Afrax to a location where their discharge wouldn’t have such a bad effect, and the Doctor got his foot stuck and ended up hanging upside down for half an hour! Oh, it was hilarious, you should have been there! And, Dad, he made a mistake that would have nearly killed us but I noticed in time and fixed it, so this time I saved the day!” She threw her head back and laughed, and Rory fought the urge to interject that he really didn’t appreciate the Doctor making stupid mistakes that endangered his daughter. He’d have to mention it some other time.

“So, er, a good birthday then?” he asks.

“Yeah. Yeah, it was a good birthday, Dad,” she replies with a brilliant smile.

They talk for hours about everything, and the night passes by, and before he is quite ready it is morning and he needs to head back to Leadworth. River has dozed off, curled up on a corner of her narrow prison bed. He fishes his vortex manipulator out of his pocket, leans over to brush her curls from her face and kiss her forehead, and whispers, “Goodbye, beautiful.” He presses the button.

The faint crack of time travel and the flash of light only cause River to stir in her sleep, dislodging a few of her presents.