Rusty autumnal pallets painted footprints on the chessboard paving slabs. The red and golden leaves had started to find their home on the Parisian pavements escaping to huddle in corners against the turbulent wind. They curled slightly in a valiant attempt to taste the last of the September sun. The earth smelt of decay and rebirth and hope. One final flourish before winter took hold. At least there were two things she could rely on, autumn, and gravity, most of the time.
River Songs heels clipped the pavement in a staccato as she pulled her coat tighter, protection from the coming storm, or a past one dependent on your perspective.
London 2008 had netted her the sum total of spiked hair and a blue shirt running along the high street, with bows and arrows, of all things. A long brown coat and a face that was too young. A face that had been running, running from the bad wolf and the pain of losing Rose Tyler. A face that she couldn't interact with. She had been warned, there were rules. Not that she didn't bend those rules once in a while. River had watched an interesting interaction between him and a pretty young girl who he enthusiastically named Sally Sparrow before sprinting into the subway. From her safe vantage point across the street she shook her head. It's just so typical of him to arm himself with Cupid's bow when she's investigating Angels.
She's tempted to follow him, to see if he actually shoots something. Then let him just try and lecture her about carrying a weapon, but she's here for a reason and doctorates in Archeology don't get earned without a little cheating. Purely for the purposes of historical accuracy of course.
River had been conducting research in the Luna archives when she had come across it, a holotape copy of a film she had watched as a child. She had smiled at the memory. Rory stealing glances as well as popcorn whenever he thought her best friend and mother wasn't looking. Considering that time restraints weren't, strictly speaking, relevant River had flipped the console to play. Discarding her heels on the archive floor she curled her feet underneath her and let the film and memories wash over her. It was comforting, perhaps a little too comforting as when she awoke a few hours later the tape had run its course and a familiar face looked at her from the display.
"The Angels have the phone box." he says, eyes fixed on her.
"Well, hello sweetie. You do have a habit of showing up in the most unusual places," she tells him swinging her feet around to land on the cool archive floor.
"And I didn't even have the chance to get properly dressed for the occasion."
The tape continues to play as she finds her shoes and starts keying in search request data into the archives computers.
"Creatures from another world," he elaborates.
"You don't say," she smirks, bringing up the time and causation schematics relevant to the disk. She pauses a moment to watch as his glasses slowly glide towards the tip of his nose; he secures them with a finger.
"Only when you see them," he continues.
"Oh and I intend to sweetie, just need to map the temporal co-ordinates." She inputs a code into the vortex manipulator strapped to her wrist and downloads the data file for good measure.
"The lonely assassins…" she can hear him say in the background as she slips her boots on and pockets a lipstick, after all, you can never be too careful.
"Oh, Doctor. Assassins are always lonely my love," she tells him, presses a button, and vanishes.
River had waited a few minutes before crossing the street and entering the small shop with the TARDIS blue front door. He had a habit of doing that, leaving the people he had touched with a subconscious need to signal to the world he existed, that he mattered to them.
It's how she had started mapping his timeline in the first place.
An ancient roman household allter engraved with the unmistakable image of the TARDIS, crafted with care out of marble and granite. Poosh, where an entire water park had been created in his honor full of celery shaped slides, scarf striped pools and free jelly babies included in the ticket price. A starship on the back of Whale, who's national holiday involved wearing bow ties and dressing gowns.
Sparrow & Nightingale – Antiquarian Books and rare DVD's was small but welcoming. The smell of tea and ancient paper permeated the air and dialogue from Casablanca filtered through to the shop floor from somewhere in the back. She spent a pleasant five minutes running her hands over the spines of leather bound books printed with golden letters. There was something so tactile about ancient books she had always been drawn to. It was as if the fragments of dust and yellowed paper told their own story, separate from the words on the page
There were bath drenched books that had expanded to twice their normal size, books who's moth bitten pages threatened to disintegrate under the hard press of a fingertip, books that were pristine and ancient and obviously unloved.
These were the books that held the memories of the hundreds of hands that had previously held them. Fragments of history a trained eye could piece together. She was an archaeologist after all. Scanning the shelves, she picked up a copy of The Nature of Angels by Antinous Bellori and took it over to the counter.
"How much, for this one?" she enquired turning the book so the title was visible. The blond haired woman looked up from the counter.
"Unusual choice," she stated sliding the book towards her and tracing an unconscious finger over the eyes of the angel depicted on the front cover.
"I have, very particular interests." River smiled back at her. "Interests that may, I believe, align with yours Ms, Sparrow."
Sally's eyes narrowed and she reflectively glanced behind her before continuing in a whisper.
"Are you with him?" She enquired hoping the question was abstract enough not to provoke any unwanted questions
Rivers smile broadened "Let's just say that the relationship between me and the spiv is… complicated. In actuality, we haven't met. Not that we won't meet. The geography teacher though. Now me and that bow tie have history." River inspects a perfectly manicured nail and sighs wistfully before continuing.
"I'm not doing a great job at explaining myself here am I? How would he do it?" She mused.
A smile spread over Sally's face. Timey wimey she muttered to herself before asking "Would you care for a cup of tea?"
The tea had been strong and conversation easy. Sally was intelligent and charming, her coco colored eyes sparkling as she remembered.
"I don't' know what it was about him. He was bundle of nervous energy, couldn't keep still. I was such a mess, soaked to the skin. But the way he looked at me. Told me he skipped work because life was short and I was hot," she laughed at the memory
"Oh, believe me. Love at first sight isn't as rare as you may think. And you are hot sweetie."
River replied as her hands caressed the teacup up in front of her, a poor substitute for the heat emitted by his skin as she herself remembers falling in love with a man she had just met. As her mother had been to him so he was to her. The first face this face saw, born of a shared fire that forever tied him to her and tethered the both of them to the bluest of blue boxes.
"I know what you mean. "River whispers "Sometimes you meet someone and it's almost as if your life up until that point has been, lacking. Incomplete somehow. Like the cells that make up your molecular structure have been vibrating to the wrong frequency. Then he arrives and you find yourself momentarily paralysed. Unable to move or breathe as your world reconfigured. Your own personal universe realigns. You fight against it because it's impossible. You're too different, but there's something. A small glimmer of hope. It's beautiful. Then you fall, because you have no choice, and you know that he will catch you."
Sally smiled and reddened slightly, unsure if she should have been listening to her confession before continuing. She clears her throat "So, where was I?"
"The hot policeman," prompted River raising a perfectly sculptured eyebrow.
"Oh, yes. Kathy had been thrown back to the 1920's but Billy ended up in 1969, even saw the moon landing live on an old black and white television apparently."
"I'm sorry," river interrupted "did you say 1969?"
"Yes, that's what he said. Are you alright?"
River stared, eyes wide, brow furrowed. Standing she grabbed her cost from the back the chair.
"Sorry, there's somewhere I have to be."
"Wait !" Sally bolted from her seat almost knocking it over, "just tell me what's going on,"
"I'm sorry" River threw over her shoulder, quickly exiting the shop and ducking into an alleyway a few doors down.
The angles had trapped him there, young, so young, before meeting her mother, before meeting her father. And she had been sent to kill him. Momentarily she finds herself unable to breathe, shaking at the implication. She remembers that day. That day when she was someone else. A little girl trapped inside a space suit begging for help and running. Always running.
She inputs the coordinates to Paris September, 2nd 1912, 16:32 and vanished. Now, she was running again.
All of time and space to run in and he could never escape the one thing that tormented him. Himself. He was always there; different faces but always the same. He could still remember. The TARDIS hummed quietly, soothing noises designed to calm him, a subsonic melody designed to cage the fire within him but it was no good. He paced, flipping switches and toggles at random.
"Whenever and wherever you want" she had told him, but it had been a lie, a clever lie to make him believe that he wouldn't loose her. A lie that he wanted to believe so desperately that he had tuned out the rest of the sentence; dismissed it like the sound of his breaking heart. Chosen to believe, against all odds, that he could hold on to her forever. He should have realized that a River always needed to flow, to move. He should have known that a River couldn't be contained, no matter how large the box. Then, one day, she had disappeared.
Hadn't even said goodbye.
Hadn't left him a trail to follow, just cold blank empty spaces where her laughter used to reside.
The TARDIS felt empty, he felt empty in a way that he hadn't in years.
Vastra, Jenny, and Strax had helped of course. They'd been brilliant. Protected him, cared for him and let him wallow. Let his sadness consume him like the cloud he made his home. It couldn't last though, no sadness could consume a mind as hungry as his for long. There had been a puzzle, and a pond, and Clara. Now though, he was alone again with only time as his companion. Lots and lots of time.
He's not above being petulant either and in is current state he could even be described as cruel. He knows it's not her fault, not really but the TARDS and River had shared a bond. Shared a oneness that he was, if he was honest with himself, completely jealous of. He would catch them from time to time conspiratorial whispering to one another when they thought he wasn't paying attention.
Like the time his entire collection of 18th-century hats had been found floating in the swimming Poole on deck ten. Or the time when he had definitely set the coordinated for Breesentimantori, a small planet in the Cariad belt. He had wanted to go snorkelling off Bamabay and watch the migration of the speaking coral.
They ended up in simatrio's largest museum instead. Not that he minded particularly, museum curators were the even worse at cataloguing history than archaeologists. Honestly, how these people kept heir jobs he hadn't a clue. It wasn't his fault that they didn't take kindly to constructive criticism. It wasn't his fault that his Sonic activated the mindus star and they had to rebuild half the wing. If they didn't know the difference between dead and dormant quite frankly they had no right to complain.
The TARDIS had allowed her to leave. That wasn't acceptable. Despite the connection they shared the TARDIS should have know what it would do to him. She had telepathic circuits, how could she not have known.
So the doctor sulked, and the TARDIS listened. Felt his melancholy fingers as they brushed her console. Cooled the air to prevent him from combusting when his anger took over and eventually, relented. One night, when sleep had finally claimed him she reached out. Tugging at the timelines like guitar strings in need to tuning until she found the right frequency. She found her child with ease and with a conspiratorial hum, put her plan into action.