Chapter Text
The first thing she registered was the pounding headache. The second was the press of firm, hard planes of a male body at her back and a leg slipped between her own. She thought the latter must be some sort of lingering dream and she chased it, forlorn as the feeling - the stark reality of an arm slung over her side - only served to wake her further. Well, it was that and the headache. As she woke, the night before came back to her, belling out in a tangled haze: the nightclub, the throbbing beat, the twist of bodies and the drink - the little voice in her head reminding her that she, a fifty-year-old, should not be going out like this with her twenty-something co-stars.
Another voice pointed out that Matt wasn’t twenty anymore, but thirty. She shoved that thought away.
Matt.
It was then that she heard the soft greeting whispered into her ear in a deep timbre that she recognized immediately.
“Good morning, dear.”
Alex gasped and shot up, springing to the edge of the bed so quickly one would think she’d woke up to see a spider on the left-hand pillow and not a fairly attractive, semi-naked man. She clutched at the sheets, pressing them to her chest as a tiny shriek escaped her throat.
Matt Smith was in her bed. Matthew Smith was in her bed, and they were both half-naked. How much had she drank last night?
He sat up slowly, gentle fingers brushing her arm, blue eyes filling with worry. “What’s wrong?”
Pulling back and jumping up from the bed, Alex took the covers with her, more or less waddling and stumbling over them in her haste to find some clothes. She wrenched open the dresser drawer and rummaged through its contents, eyes widening as she realized that absolutely none of the items in the dresser were hers.
Matt was getting out of bed now, walking toward her, and she spun - for the first time seeing the room. The walls were a faint creme, not the color of her bedroom walls. The dark blue coverlets that were now wrapped around her were a contrast to the eggshell ones she had at home, and the tweed jacket draped across a settee in the corner wasn’t lost on her eyes either.
This wasn’t her room.
"River?” She didn’t register the question until the second go. “River, what’s wrong?”
Her eyes snapped back to Matt and she realized. It must be some kind of stupid joke he was playing. “Matt, this isn’t funny. Where are we and where are my clothes?”
She watched his forehead wrinkle as he stood there in the middle of the room, halfway between the bed and her, unsure if he should go forward and not wanting to back away.
“What?” He looked so confused and oh, he was a brilliant actor, she had to admit. “You’re in the TARDIS,” he continued, drawing out his words with utmost care, “I picked you up last night.”
“I beg your pardon?” She stopped right there, mouth dropping open in disbelief. “Look, Matthew, I like you, I really do, but I was sodding drunk last night and that doesn’t give you the right to bloody undress me and stash me away in some hotel room so you can have a laugh with your friends. I’m damn well fifty and you’re thirty,” she hissed, “this isn’t Uni.”
She had to give him points for having the decency to flinch. Alex snatched a set of clothing from the dresser, slipped them on, and then stormed out the door.
She had somehow thought him so much more mature than this - than to pull such a childish prank. Especially on her. Perhaps if it had been to Karen it wouldn’t have been so bad. Karen was his age, more the age for such things and Alex so painfully wasn’t anywhere near the right age for this kind of thing to be appropriate anymore. She wasn’t amused by this in the slightest- she was hurt and furious.
Alex was just starting to think that this was an awfully long hotel hallway when she burst into what could be none other than the TARDIS control room. That strange-shaped panel was there, littered with levers and scattered with buttons as she knew it to be, and there were the peculiar walls with their inset circles and lights. The floor was glass. So that was the joke? Bring her to the set on their day off and try and convince her that the Doctor was real? Oh, please!
Alex rolled her eyes and strode across the room to the doors.
When she flung them open, she froze, smacked in the face with a blast of icy air and a stupendous view. A gasp forced from her lungs, her nails scratching the frame as stars, literal stars burned behind a curtain of a million colors that lit up a shimmering nebula. The TARDIS hung in the air, twirling ever so slightly like a mobile suspended from a string. A chill coursed down her spine and her whole body went taut, cold, then hot, her mouth turning to sand and her throat constricting as she stood there in the doorway.
Trembling, she fell a step back, and behind her she was vaguely aware of Matt- or whoever he was, rushing down the hall after her. She was, in fact, in space: deep space. Every possible, coherent thought was strangled by the view of the Universe spread out before her eyes. And she felt small.
A hand became known on her left shoulder, shocking her in that touch so much she jumped. Matt’s- no, not-Matt’s - the Doctor’s? hand pulled her away from the door, prying her fingers from it and taking them in his huge, cold ones. Cold. Matt’s hands were never cold. And that stupid voice in the back of her head said something about Time Lords running on a lower body temperature, but no, that was ridiculous. He couldn’t be the Doctor. She fought to swallow through the sudden dryness of her throat and blinked, not realizing until now that her eyes had become glassy with confused tears. The salt left tracks on her cheek as one broke free and she turned, focusing on the concerned, disconcerting face now just mere inches from her own.
“Where am I?”
“I told you, you’re in the TARDIS, River. It’s okay. What’s wrong, hm?” he looked so worried and she irrationally wanted to slap him for it.
She snatched her hand away from his grasp. “Stop it?”
“Stop what?”
“Calling me River. I’m not River.”
He took a breath, clasping his hands together and wringing them as he looked at her. “Ok.”
Alex snorted, rubbing her forehead. “And now you’re just patronizing me.”
“What would you like me to do, dear?” he seemed so eager to please in such a ridiculous way and now Alex was upside down, inside out, confused and she felt stupid for not knowing anymore if he was Matt or wasn’t. What would she like him to do? “Tell me how I got here.”
“You were trying to get into some flat in Cardiff and I came by and asked you if you were alright, and you were, well, very drunk, Ri-” he paused and bit his lip, correcting himself,
“Dear, and I didn’t want to leave you alone. So I brought you back in the TARDIS and you fell asleep on the jumpseat.”
She couldn’t think of anything to say to that. Mostly because she couldn’t prove his story not to be true. She then looked down at the clothes she was wearing. “But I woke up- with no clothes.”
“You had clothes,” he huffed rather childishly and she gave him a withering look. Barely. He took a breath, looking uncomfortable. “I-I helped you get out of them because I didn’t think it would be too comfortable, you know, sleeping in your clothes.”
Alex pinched the bridge of her nose. “I want you to take me back, Doctor.” Even after years of saying that name it felt foreign and out of context on her lips.
“Well, first,” he took her hand again, squeezing it with a charming smile that succeeded in melting her. “If you’re not my wife- and- and now that I hear you speak more, I don’t think you are. There’s something different about you. And I’m terribly sorry. It’s a horrible mistake, I always make such a mess of things-” he stopped short and collected his thought, blowing out through his mouth. “What’s your name? I mean, it’s only fair -considering-” he paused, “Oh, god, River, what if she thinks that we- you know? And, and I don’t- I just, I thought you were her and I never would’ve gotten another woman’s clothes off without her permission.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Names, right. Names.” He collected his thoughts again. “What’s your name?”
“Alex,” she whispered, watching him warily, “Alex Kingston.”
“There,” he smiled that smile that Alex somehow instinctively knew wasn’t Matt’s, but the Doctor’s - and she looked into his eyes and saw the timeless age there and it terrified her. “There,” he continued, relaxing after his momentary freak-out, “Isn’t that better? That’s better, I think. A proper introduction is always a good thing. Hello, Alex,” he said quite civilly, considering how they’d started off, “I’m the Doctor.”
Hearing him say it was somehow so much weirder than she’d expected. There was a keen difference about him as he ran a nervous hand through that flop of hair. She could see Matt and everything he made the Doctor and yet there was a something beneath that, a disturbing layer of soul that marked this man as his own. It was this notion that made her push away all thoughts of meeting River Song.
“I’m sorry about all of that,” he said finally, breaking into her thoughts. “You just- you look so much like my wife,” a measure of unfathomable sadness later, “I thought you were River. I was wrong.”
Swallowing, Alex looked around her, wrapping her arms around herself. “Does your ship really travel in time, then?” Half of her mouth twitched upward in a well-used partial smirk and her voice dropped to that breathy whisper. “Next stop everywhere?”
He looked as if he wasn’t sure whether to be excited or scared and confused. “How do you know that? How could you possibly know that?”
It rolled off her tongue as if she were acting a scene: “Spoilers.”
He stood there like a scared rabbit who’d seen a ghost. Alex watched as his adam’s apple bobbed visibly and he leaned on the console, staring at her. When he asked: “Who are you?” she was hit with an incredible, ironic sense of deja-vu.
Biting the inside of her cheek to avoid answering too quickly, she crossed the room slowly to lean next to him against the console, body still trembling with the aftermath of her fright and her mind spinning with confusion and new ideas and oh, this was mad! Perhaps she was mad, but that didn’t stop her uncontrollable mouth from rambling on.
“I think- well - I think that I’m... I don’t know,” she paused with a sharp laugh, shaking her head, as she realized that was a stupid answer. “Bless, what am I saying? This sounds insane, but I’m an actress - I play River on a show called Doctor Who. I thought you were Matt,” a sidelong glance, “he plays you. And... up until now I thought- I still think - I’m really confused, because you’re not real.”
It was a horrible way of putting it and she held her breath, waiting for his reaction, body tense. Nervous fingers traced the rim of a lever she didn’t recognize. It was insane. However, a glimmer of light dawned behind his old eyes and he looked as if he believed her.
“No wonder she was so upset flying through the vortex last night.”
Alex didn’t wait to consider it strange that she knew who he was talking about. “The TARDIS, you mean.”
He made a small noise of assent and spun, bracing both hands on cold metal, staring down at the array of buttons. “Of course, an alternate Universe. Anything’s possible. I suppose there must be a universe where... where River and I aren’t real and we have doppelgangers who play us in a show on the Telly.” Hearing him say it made it sound horrid. “I must’ve fell in, or-” he paused, “Or the barrier’s the thing that fell.” His eyes shot up to meet Alex’s and he swallowed. “I need to find my wife.”
“I need to get home.”
Somehow it felt like the opening to one of Steven’s episodes and it was giving her a headache. Alex wanted to know that she wasn’t trapped in a Universe where everyone thought she was the woman that murdered the Doctor. She wanted to go home and see her daughter in LA and get annoyed with Matt when he flirted just a bit too much. This was strange and unknown and frightening and she didn’t like it one bit, and yet there was this taste of adventure filling her mouth that she couldn’t understand.
“Help me find River and I’ll take you home,” the Doctor bargained. “We need to fix this.”
How could she help him? And yet- that boyish grin spread across his face -and how could she resist that? Sod it, she was fifty, but this could either a really weird dream or the adventure of a lifetime and she knew that she would regret it for the rest of her life if she said no. So, she found herself nodding once.
“Okay.”
Alex watched as he trotted around the console, calling, “Throw that lever, will you? Ah- that one, the big red one, yes.” She obeyed him, a rush spreading up her spine as the TARDIS roared to life beneath her fingers. There was no imagination needed this time round. The Doctor gave her a smile and threw the flight lever, and the glass floor lurched beneath them. She gripped the console, considering this the strangest thing that had ever happened to her, and knowing that there was no turning back now.