I haven't written fanfiction in ages but was recently drawn into the world of Doctor Who in particular the last two series. Here is my attempt to get into River Song's head. Thank you so much to JaneScarlett for the beta reading and motivation! Check out her Doctor Who fics!
I don't own Doctor Who or any of its characters. I do own Lord West-Lethbridge though, poor fool.
Contemplation While Jumping Out Of Windows
Tonight, Dr. River Song finds herself in yet another sticky situation, with, really, no one to blame but herself. It seems she cultivates little gems like this: circumstances that are almost impossible to get out of. This particular one had been thrust into her hands by the Luna University.
The trade off: they spring her out of prison for an evening; in exchange she steals back a very valuable object from a closely guarded building, during a dazzling public event.
Well, ok, maybe the dazzling event part was her idea. It wouldn't do to be simple and discreet. A girl has a reputation to uphold. And Stormcage allows her these little adventures; they are handsomely compensated for turning a blind eye.
Generally, she looks forward to her little outings. River plans them with great care: shoes, dress, bag, software, and weapons; lots and lots of weapons. She lives for these nights. After all, what else is there for her? Serving 12,000 consecutive life sentences for murder. Aside from the special times when the Doctor comes to call, there is little else to fill her days. How else to pass the time?
The trouble is time. Hers is running out. Here, outside, running and planning and shooting, time passes too damn quickly. Some day soon he will no longer come to call, and then she will truly be imprisoned.
The walls of her Stormcage cell bear the marks of centuries. Near her bed, close to where she lays her head down to sleep, someone scratched out a double handful of sentences with a sharp object:
I am free.
I am not here. Not really. Not completely.
This prison is an illusion.
These walls cannot hold me.
No man keeps me in captivity.
I am free to soar through cloudless skies.
I am free to feel the rush of waves against my skin.
I walk the foothills towards distant undreamed of destinations.
There I can see you. There I may press you to me. Free to kiss your lips and smooth your brow.
This prison may hold my body but it is not my reality.
I am free.
Someone etched them into the wall with painful precision, many years before River Song ever set foot in this cell. She has traced each letter a million times, committed each word to memory. But she doesn't always agree with them. Sometimes, Stormcage is reality. The rest of the world, and all its horror and wonder only an illusion. She has to believe this, to cling to her prison with all her strength or she might go mad. Time is not a straight path, and hers is even more twisted than most. Going up and down and sideways and backways and zigzag to the end again. Stormcage is constant; the fortress that cannot fall. Her safe haven.
Recently, she finds herself just a little weary of all the running. Tired of the waiting and recording details in her diary. Tired of jumping out of windows. Tonight, River wishes she were safely back in her cell instead of standing here in an evening dress and high heels, waiting for him to collect her in the TARDIS. She's tired of stealing things and shooting people and dancing the tango with sweaty strangers just to get close to the prize.
This evening's prize: the Oracle of Sheare, portent of doom. One drop of blood and it foretells your death. A compact statuette carved from a block of gleaming sea green jade with eyes of inlaid black diamond. It had been crafted by the blind nuns of the Sheareloft convent, achieved awareness while a whole planet sang its praises, and then for centuries it remained safe within the walls of the Luna University.
In the past, the worthy undertook a decade-long sacred pilgrimage to it to learn their fate. They fasted and prayed, and at last bled and earned their glimpse of the truth. In River's opinion, the process had been a stupendous waste of time, for many of them died before they even reached the gates of the University.
The Oracle had been stolen from its pedestal during the Flare Wars of the 36th century or was it the Battle of the Blaze in the 37th century, or even the Skirmish of Scorch in the 38th? She could never remember which. It eventually ended up here as a pretty decoration in the Grand Vertue opera house in the year 4206, wreathed in flowers. The owner of the most spectacular building in the galaxy, Lord West-Lethbridge, was rumoured to be maintaining his vast fortune by charging those selected few an arm and a leg to bleed on the Oracle. Here, in Vertue, what was once a sacred Oracle is now a cheap parlour trick.
And here in Vertue is where River now waits, her escape route planned down to the last detail, with nothing left to do but count the minutes until the fun part starts. Nothing to do but count the minutes, and think.
When life refuses to make sense, someone once told her, make your own sense of it. Now, crouched behind a pillar with Lethbridge and his guards hot on her trail, is probably not the right time to start analysing her life. Nevertheless. How did she get here? Life shifting between stifling imprisonment and dizzying adventure. When she reflects, she realises that her life makes sense in these terms: violence, deceit, recklessness, anger, love. And him, always him, circling back to him.
They say whatever you're accustomed to is what is normal to you. And River was made accustomed to violence practically from birth. She sees beauty in its cruel jagged lines, in its dissonance, in the sleek silver form and the comforting weight of a fire arm. If reality refuses to bow you can cut, claw, kick and -if needs be- blast your way through.
Violence has always come naturally to her. Violence is a dance and the quality of the dance depends on your partner. It isn't blind rage: ripping flesh apart with your bare hands, firing bullet after bullet into soft flesh, hot blood on her knuckles, the singing adrenaline charged surge of exhilaration. Well, there is that too. True violence however, is an art. Knowing when to hold back, coiled tight as a spring and when to let go, true and straight as an arrow. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
She knows violence like he never can. Never wants to. He tends to be a bit self righteous about it, the peaceful wanderer. He needs her violent steak though, he'll be grateful for it as over and over she will prove how useful it can be. In fact, it has occurred to her that he may be using her just a little bit. But doesn't every professional want to be used? Violence is her trade, and she makes no apologies for that.
Deceit: another fine word. The artful cut of an evening dress or tailored suit to clothe her true intent. The proper length of pearls to coil around her neck. The arrangement of curls to achieve a perfectly seductive countenance. The right words to say, the right way to say them. Lie; lie like your life depends on it, even when it doesn't. Especially when it doesn't. Lie till the words sounds truer than the truth. Practice makes perfect. Say it with a straight face: I hate you, I love you, everything is going to be fine, I know what I am doing, I did everything I could. Lie with your whole body; really throw some weight behind it. Love the lie. Hallucinogenic lipstick if all else fails. One brush of her lips to cause confusion, distraction, ecstasy or death.
The Doctor is no stranger to deceit, but like all doctors he makes excuses for his lies. Concealing the truth for the higher good. Being cruel to be kind. The Doctor lies; but always with an element of sheepishness, of guilt. Not the way she does: like that's all there is, only the lie, perfect as a well crafted painting.
How many lies got her here to Vertue? Here in Vertue with her back cold against the pillar, the toes of her shoes pinching, the fluttering of nerves in her stomach.
And then there was recklessness. The glorious feeling of going right when she should go left. Of the giving the wrong answer, or asking the exactly right question. That feeling of getting up in the morning and knowing there is nowhere you have to be, nothing you have to do, but whatever the hell you feel like doing. There is nothing you need that you can't take by force. There is no place you can't go. All you have to do is want it.
How many days had she spent as Mels, giving all her possessions away or stealing whole new wardrobes and cars and weapons at random, just because that's what she felt like doing when she opened her eyes that morning. Bits of that old life still shine through, though study and experience have taught her there is much merit in planning and biding your time. But there is still that feeling of heady freedom, stronger that any drug when she switches lanes without a warning or takes something that doesn't belong to her.
That rush of jumping out of windows with high heels on.
Violence is her trade, her gift, but for years anger was her passion. The passion that defined that gift. Anger burning brighter than all the stars in the galaxy. One sentence to fuel it forever: He didn't save her. He didn't save her. He didn't save her. He didn't save her. It's like the sound of drums in her head. Like a pulse in her body. Her only thought; the driving force behind her survival, for years. Then, finally, the thought that he could have saved her. He could have saved billions through out history. He simply didn't. He was arrogant. Confident in his godliness. The worst kind of monster: a self righteous one. He dressed up his indifference with rules, excuses about fixed points and time streams. She learned all this before she could even spell her own name. The anger was taught to her in the place of math and geography in a series of lessons each more terrible than the last.
In the end, it was that anger that gave her the strength to flee; it burned away all the fear. It was really anger, not death, that triggered her regeneration. Anger that drove her to him, even when she was free of the Silence, free of Kovarian. But when she had the power to do anything she desired, be anything she desired, still she found herself seeking him out.
In those years when the anger and hatred had dominated her world, it was ridiculous to think there might come a time when her love for the Doctor would be her driving force. Later, with the love came anger again. Anger that he had trapped her into killing him. That he needed every last piece of her: her lives, her affection, her freedom. Sometimes she is so angry she can't sleep at night. Then she remembers what she can and will do for the love of a good man. To what dizzying heights he can push her, further, better, more amazing than she had ever hoped she could be, for love of him. For love and the Doctor.
She can't recall a time she didn't know who he was. The Doctor. A dark prince travelling under a curse in his blue box. The last Gallifreyan in his stolen machine, cutting a swath through universes more easily than she might run a man through. A man who can make armies run away in terror. Who can give you your life with one hand, only to take it away with the other. The destroyer of worlds. The oncoming storm. In a way, for a very, very long time, he was her only reality. Years of training, then wandering, then the years in Leadworth. Biding her time. Shaping herself into a weapon. Honing her hatred of him and fascination with him until it was like the fine edge of a blade. He was her only constant. Her very first and last thought.
Then, finally, the man himself. Nothing could have prepared her for him: not Kovarian, not Amelia. For years, she had hated and loved her Doctor in equal measures. A man who made all men pale in comparison; but she had never really known him. He was so luminous, so clever and compassionate, so utterly worth it, beyond any story Amy could have told her. And so very dark, so alone, so full of regret and that horrible coldness that comes with a long, long life. She could see it in his eyes: a certain deadness. He was far more terrifying than Madame Kovarian could have ever described him. And she also knew without a doubt that only she could match him.
She had never believed in love at first sight. Maybe she still doesn't. But seeing him at last, her life made sense. Who else could she ever love? Who would ever accept her the way she was? (Up and down and sideways and backways and zigzag to the end.) Only the last Time Lord, who held all of time and space in his head. How did he do that without going mad?
She has to write it all down in her diary, carefully marking each day and colour coding and cross referencing and even then she can't always keep the timelines straight. She has a collection of photographs of every one of his faces. And the absurd thing was she loves every one of them individually.
Love, she sometimes feels, on days when Stormcage's walls draw in furiously around her shutting everything else out except him, was this love? Surely love is about choice? Surely it is about free will? Sometimes she fights so hard against her programming, she feels the rage surging through her only to burst against the top of her skull like a sickening hot bubble. Then she feels like she doesn't love him, like she can't love him. Not when no one asked her if this is what she wanted for herself. Amy once laughed at this, and said in her carefree way that people were lying when they said that love was about making a choice. How could there have been any other choice for her but Rory?
Sometimes, even if it's difficult to admit, she still blames him. For telling her about the woman she would become. A woman who shaped her life by his words, who took every one of them for gospel. Time is not fixed, but some things are inevitable. This desire for him, to let him shape her into whatever he needs, is out of her hands. Melody Pond has always been a weapon. Better to be his weapon. Her love for him is a fixed point; to attempt to escape it will only cause paradox.
She had always been about instant gratification until she met him. Now she finds herself writing everything down, looking for signs in stone, reading between his every line. Waiting. Waiting, it seems, is her heritage. Passed down from mother to daughter, like some precious family heirloom. All the waiting and hoping that the next time will be a good day. The excruciating pain when it isn't a good day and the even sharper pain when it is, because it might be the last one. The uncertainty of it all. Because every day could be the last day with him. She won't know it's over until it is, like an aneurism. That last beautiful moment with him, the last time he will hold her hand, the last long look of warmth in his eyes, that last kiss. Kisses, in River's opinion, are a thing out of space and time. They can last for a beat and feel like they go on forever, shockwave after shockwave rolling through you.
She can hear the hum of the lift, pulling her out of her reverie. Soon enough Lethbridge and his entourage will be entering through the arches, ready to arrest her. She should have been more careful. She used to be, once upon a time, before she realised how much fun the direct way could be. The more danger the better; the Doctor could sniff danger out like a scent hound. It doesn't get much more dangerous than stealing the Oracle of Sheare at the premiere of "The King's Demons" where everyone glamorous and wealthy and famous -or just clever enough to sneak in- has gathered to mingle and preen. River fits right in with her pleated Grecian evening gown of ivory silk, her curls piled atop her head and threaded with pearls, the beaded velvet handbag swinging from her wrist. And of course the gun, large and gleaming, generally strapped to her calf but now comfortably solid in her hand.
She checks the safety on it for the hundredth time. She left him the message ages ago; planned that part to the last detail. It wouldn't do to crash through Vertue's famous stained glass window with no Doctor to catch her before she hit the ground some two hundred stories below. She supposes she could use her vortex manipulator; but really, it doesn't go with her dress.
"Dr. Song! I don't think you realise what you've just stolen. It's not just a pretty artefact you can auction off to the first bidder," Lord West-Lethbridge says, his nasal voice echoing through the arches. She can hear the click of his entourage's boots behind him.
"Really?" River says. "I had no idea, does it do something interesting? Play a little tune perhaps? Weather forecasting? Does it change colours?" She steps into view. Lethbridge is sweating visibly, his bowtie has come undone and his cuffs are flapping loosely. Hardly the polished gentleman he was a scant ten minutes ago. He must make more money off the statue than she had previously assumed.
"Where is it, Dr. Song? Where could you put my two-foot-high statue?"
River holds up her right arm to reveal the velvet drawstring evening bag dangling from her wrist. "Bigger on the inside." River says the left side of her mouth twitching with suppressed mirth.
"Give it back and we won't press charges. We won't even contact Stormcage. You can just leave." There is a catch in his voice, a desperate sound.
"No, I really don't think so. Not today. It never really belonged here anyway. Don't you agree?"
"It's mine. My family has owned it for ages. You're stealing it."
"Merely taking it home. Do you know that some only see visions of their death? Others hear of it. The Oracle speaks to the lucky few. I wonder what it would say, were you to ask it who it belongs to?"
"This is absurd! A piece of stone. A trinket! Speaking? No one has ever..." Lethbridge splutters.
"Yes, well I'd love to stay and chat, but the thing is I have a date in about...ten, nine, eight seconds," River says, glancing down at the slim gold watch on her wrist.
Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. The sonic pulse goes off, a blast of coloured glass raining down on Lethbridge and his men, River is flat on the ground; with her face in her hands, she escapes the worst of it. Some of the less fortunate are torn to shreds. Lethbridge, protected by a human shield is still standing. River pushes herself up with her hands, glass shards cutting into the soft skin of her palms.
She dips one hand down to pull the drawstrings of her bag tight, when all at once she notices the blood slicking her fingers. She retracts her hand abruptly, too late. Her fingertip grazes the jade; it's surprisingly warm to touch. She feels something akin to an electric shock where her skin meets the Oracle.
Out of the corner of her eye she can see books, millions and millions of them. Her own arm, encased in a spacesuit, reaching towards something. River's mouth goes bone dry. A face before her, filled with so many conflicting emotions. It's a face that means something to her, that sad look in his dark eyes. A face that isn't his face, but is all at the same time.
She hears a voice in her ear, a soft, gentle, soothing voice. With a Scottish accent like mother; maybe it was Amy's voice, like an interface.
Count the Shadows. Energy surging, filling. Over and over, no end. NO END. Saved. In the library, there with the books. Saved. No end in sight. Without him. In the end you will be strangers. The longing eternal. Half a life. An imprint in a loop. Saved. Saved. Saved. Saved.
River whips her hand out of the bag, breaking contact. She pulls the drawstrings tight and brushes the wetness off her cheeks. She rarely cries; she broke herself of the habit as a child. Why now? What does it mean: saved? How can that be her death? In the end you will be strangers. Yes, this one she knows; has always known. One day he will no longer know her, her Doctor.
But this isn't the death she expected. Where is the blood, the violence, the fray? River Song, famed archaeologist had always expected to die on the glory of the battlefield. Or if not, then perhaps surrounded by her grandchildren, with his hand in hers. An impossible death; of course she knows that. Then again, he is an impossible man and she a child of the TARDIS. Her whole life has been impossible. This vision isn't death. She isn't sure what it is, but she knows now is not the time to contemplate it.
Lethbridge is still advancing towards her, his limp pronounced, his minions moaning and covered in gashes and bruises.
"Please, just give it back," he rasps. "If I lose it, I die. That's what I saw. I'll die."
"We're all going to die," River says. "Most of us, anyway. Chances are, you are going to die with or without the Oracle. Deal with it."
"Please." There are sloppy tears streaming down his face, his nose is running.
"Now, now, Lord Lethbridge. Begging is so undignified." She takes a few steps towards the gaping window, the coloured shards crunching under her high heels; her gun is still trained upon his weeping form. She smiles, turns back for one last look, smoothing her hair with one hand and maintaining her grip on her gun with the other.
"Be seeing you!" she says and leaps backwards. Her muscles exult in the release as she falls, the wind whips her dress and she feels it in the pit of her stomach. She's alive, so alive, and more alive than she can ever feel at Stormcage. Even if it kills her, she never wants to let go of this feeling.
But it won't kill her, not today. He's coming, because he always comes when she calls. When she feels his arm close in on her waist dragging her into the safety of the TARDIS her skin sings with relief and joy. Her Doctor came through once again.
If she twists her head to the side she can just make out his impish smile and the fond glow in his eyes. River is home, no matter what happens in her life, good or bad, she belongs here with him. She can rely on him. The Doctor came when she called, and brought her home to him.