River's Star: A Doctor Who Story
By Jake Reed
The blue box hung in the vast emptiness of space. It was both remarkable and unremarkable for many reasons. It was remarkable because this box had seen many, many corners of the universe over the years. From the genesis of planet Earth, to other worlds inhabited by creatures so strange that human minds would be driven mad trying to comprehend them. From death of the universe itself, to simpler things like a solar windstorm, this blue box had seen it all. It was unremarkable because of what the blue box was: a simple telephone booth. At least, that's what it looked like.
Specifically, the blue box took the shape of a Police Box, a type of public telephone common in British cities such as London in the mid-20th century. Constructed of sturdy wood, these blue-colored phone booths had doors that could be locked from the inside or outside with a key hidden in a panel somewhere on the box. This was so that people witnessing a crime could lock themselves safely inside and phone police for help, or even lock the perpetrator inside until help arrived to haul them away. Though they were once all over London, the boxes had become rarer with the advent of technology, and the arrival of cellular phones had made them completely obsolete in modern times.
However, this particular Police Box was not from modern times. In fact, it was much older than the 1960s from which the design originated. In fact, the box wasn't even of Earth at all, but from another planet entirely.
Gallifrey, the home of the Time-Lords.
Once a great race of beings with the ability to travel the cosmos to any point in time, the Time-Lords were no more, the victims of the last Great Time War, nearly erasing their existence from all of space and time. Nearly, because there was one Time-Lord left.
He is called The Doctor, and he was alone.
But he is not alone anymore...
The Doctor opened the wooden doors of the TARDIS and waved his hand outside at the vast space that lay around them. If River didn't know the Doctor as well as she did, she would have wondered how they were breathing in the vacuum of space, but the TARDIS, which stood for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space, was full of all sorts of secrets, not the least of which is the seemingly magical ability to maintain an atmosphere around itself even in interstellar space.
The TARDIS was also "bigger on the inside," to quote nearly everyone who stepped inside the massive ship; literally thousands of rooms formed the labyrinthian interior of the TARDIS, with the central Console Control room being the primary one. The immensely smaller Police Box exterior was an illusion, part of a camouflage-circuit that got stuck when the TARDIS once landed in 1960 London. The Doctor hadn't bothered to fix it because he soon became accustomed to the look of the Police Box.
"So what do you think?" The Doctor asked River. The Doctor was an alien, but he looked human. He had only two legs and two arms, and short brown hair with bangs that didn't quite come down over his forehead, which was part of his fairly young, yet wise face. A Harris Tweed jacket covered his tall, thin frame, and underneath it was a light blue button up shirt and a vividly colored bow tie. The only thing that would have given him away as an alien was the twin hearts beating inside his chest. Just looking at him, you would have never guessed that he was over a thousand years old.
River Song, however, was far younger. At least, she was when compared to the Doctor; River was still several hundred years old. But while the Doctor looked like he was in his mid-twenties, thanks to both the incredibly slow rate at which Time Lords aged and the process of Regeneration, which was a rather fascinating survival mechanism that allowed Time Lords to completely "change" physical appearance when their body sustains mortal damage, River looked much older, veering closer to late forties. She had long and curly auburn hair and had a mature, cheerful face that had caused most men, including the Doctor, to fall in love with her at first sight. Unfortunately, River was married.
While this, at first glance, seemed like a rather odd and mismatched pairing, the history between River and The Doctor was unbelievably complicated. The short version is that River was a Time Lord, just like The Doctor. But River was only part Time-Lord. Her human parents, who had once travelled with the Doctor, had conceived her inside the TARDIS. As a result, River had gained some Time-Lord abilities, including their intelligence. This allowed her to devise her own time-travel method, and she often encountered the Doctor in her travels. But by the very nature of time travel, they hardly ever encountered each other in chronological order; their timelines were so out of sync that the pair had to keep journals of the adventures they had while they were apart just to keep track of each other.
But now, they were finally together, and the Doctor was showing her some of the most beautiful sights in the whole universe, including the billion-year-old star that was dying beneath the TARDIS.
"The TARDIS can take us anywhere in the universe, at any point in time, and you take me to see a dying star," River remarked as she looked down at the massive mass of gravity beneath her. "I've seen many things with you, Doctor, but this has to be the single, most terrifying."
The star was on the verge of going supernova any minute. When that happened, the whole galaxy would glow brighter than anything else in the universe, a mix of white, yellow, blue, and red flames with heat exceeding one hundred billion Kelvin, over seventeen-million times the temperature of the Earth's sun! Then, the star would collapse into a black hole that would consume everything in it's path!
"It's beautiful," River added as the Doctor stood next to her. The Doctor slipped his hand into River's.
"Would you like to take a closer look?" He asked her. River smiled at the Doctor and slipped off her shoes. She leaned her body out the door, her other hand holding the TARDIS in a death grip as she was afraid that she might slip and fall, despite the fact that the TARDIS was suspended in the weightlessness of space. Despite being part Time-Lord, she was still mostly human, so the illogical human fear was still with her.
"Come on, don't you trust me?" The Doctor asked. River smiled and let go of the TARDIS, still holding the Doctor's hand. She felt herself drift away from the TARDIS and out into space. Below her, the star continued to devour itself, starspots arcing high from the surface, some coming dangerously close to the TARDIS, but River wasn't scared anymore. In fact, it was quite the opposite; this was actually quite thrilling. The Doctor had shown River many things during their adventures together, but this was perhaps the most personal, the most intimate. She instinctively gripped his hand tighter and let out a brief chuckle, reaching her free hand towards the dying star. She could nearly feel the heat through the TARDIS's protective shielding, her heart pounding with excitement.
The Doctor gave a small tug on her arm and sent her drifting back towards the TARDIS. River let her bare feet touch the TARDIS floor, and the artificial gravity took hold again. River stumbled around for a moment before she collapsed to her knees. With his quick reflexes, the Doctor quickly threw his arm around River's waist in an attempt to catch her, but her momentum pulled him down on top of her. He gave a brief yelp, which quickly turned into a full, hearty laugh as River did the same.
The pair lay on the Console Room floor laughing for a moment before falling silent. River was still chuckling lightly as she nestled in close to the Doctor, his arm still around her stomach. She quickly noticed that the Doctor had fallen silent, and she knew that something was wrong.
"What is it, sweetie?" River asked. She rolled over to face the Doctor, and saw that the smile that had been there moments before was gone. His eyes were nearly closed, and River thought she saw tears forming at the corners.
"That was the first thing Amy did when she joined me, was float out into space," the Doctor mourned. River knew that Amy had been a big part of the Doctor's life in recent years, both her and her husband Rory. And now they were both gone, and the Doctor could never see them again. "That was right around the time we met Queen Elizabeth X." The Doctor's mood returned to a state somewhere between sorrowful and chipper; that was one of the characteristics of his current Eleventh incarnation, was the polarized emotions.
"I know, you told me," River said. She placed a hand on the Doctor's face and smiled brightly at him. "You and I both know they're just fine. They'll live full and happy lives, and so can we, knowing that we both had a huge impact on them."
"Oh, you had quite the impact on all of us," the Doctor laughed. He stood up and stared out the TARDIS door at the dying star. "I mean, seriously: who could have called it when we all discovered you were their daughter from the future? I couldn't have predicted that!"
"Just like you couldn't predict that other thing," River taunted. She came up behind him and rested a hand on his shoulder. She leaned in close and whispered into the Doctor's ear a single word: his name. A wide smile crossed the Doctor's face and he turned back to River.
"Oh, I figured that part out long ago," he claimed. "Of all the people in the universe, across all points in time, those who know my name, my true name, I could count them on one hand. And the first time I meet you, in The Library, when you whispered it into my ear, I knew exactly what you were..."
The Doctor placed his hand in River's, interlacing their fingers together. The Doctor pulled River close and, just before their lips met, the Doctor finished his sentence: "My wife." The Doctor kissed River and felt the beating of his twin hearts accelerate as he did so. River did likewise, nearly burring her face into the Doctor's.
They probably would have stayed like that forever, were it not for the blinding flash of light that signified the final death of the star below. Despite having their eyes closed, as well as facing away from the blast, both River and the Doctor saw the intense light and broke the kiss so they could observe it.
River looked down and gasped at what she saw. The star was collapsing in on itself, which she could see clearly despite the blinding light.
"It's so lovely," she said. "Thank you so much for this, Sweetie." She planted another kiss on the Doctor's lips and flashed him a quick smile before turning back to the console. "You know, you still never explained to me what exactly happened in The Library. I'd like to know, I look forward to our first meeting from your perspective!"
The Doctor was silent for a moment, but he cracked a smile at River and merely shook his head. "Spoilers," he said as he walked over to the console by River.
"That's my line," River said playfully as the Doctor came up behind her.
"No, it's our line, now," he said as he placed his hands around her waist. River laughed and grabbed the TARDIS controls.
"Oh course it is," River conceded. "I'm just glad we finally get to enjoy a proper honeymoon. We've been married for, what? A hundred years or so?"
The Doctor fell silent as he thought back to the day he and River were married. It hadn't been that long ago, really. But given the fact that the River with him was about a hundred years older than the River he married, he wasn't entirely sure; time travel got pretty tricky at times.
"Something like that," the Doctor said with a confused look on his face. "So, all of time and space. Anywhere you want to go, we can go."
River looked down at the controls, pressing a few buttons before grabbing the lever that activated the TARDIS. She looked back at the Doctor with a smile and said, "Next stop, anywhere," and pulled the lever.
The end...
...for now