Disclaimer: I don't own much, and what I own does not contain the BBC, Vertigo or DC comics, or if we're being more precise, Doctor Who and the Sandman series. I also don't own Keats, or Andy Marvell (what a marvel).
AN: This was inspired by craziness, disbelief no-one had done this before, thoughts about what the Doctor might have been running from in the vortex, and a couple of comments by RT before he left. The Time Lord tech is made up, as is the extra stuff about the other eight year olds. I just figured it seemed likely. Please, read and offer constructive feedback. It's also a crossover, but not so you'd notice, unless you already knew the universe, which you don't have to to understand, I think. If anyone disagrees please tell me; I'll happily repost it in the crossover section. It also kinda contains femslash, sort of.
But at my back I always hear
Times wingèd chariot hurrying near:
And yonder before us lie
Vast deserts of eternity.
Andrew Marvell, 1621-1678, To His Coy Mistress.
He is eight.
It is the tradition of his people, to come here, one after the other at this age. He has been preparing for it his whole life up till now; taught about it, encouraged to think about it.
He is not alone. There is only one place where they can see into the Vortex, and it is here, so the many hundreds of thousands of children who are eight this day come here with him, and stand in line outside the hall.
He is alone, in his head, trembling with excitement. What will it show him, what will the vortex tell him to be? What would he do after this? He would no longer be a child...
The dress robes itch on him. They are thick, and heavy, and he has not often had to wear them. They are tight around his shoulders, and he shifts from foot to foot uneasily. He is third in the line now, and anxiety has begun to sink into him like rain. What if all he sees is a gap in the world? What if he learns nothing? What if he is nothing, somehow a failure?
He is now directly before the doors. Then, they swing open, just enough for him to walk through, then close behind him again. The guards swing in on either side of him like the hands of a clock and sweep him up the steps.
And then he is face to face with it.
It is beautiful. Green and red and blue and stormy, flecked with impossibility and grandeur. He sees it, and he wishes to be in it, to roll in that slowly spinning eye, and learn what makes it spin, or simply sit there, laughing and enjoying the colours.
But that is not all he sees. For within it he sees something else.
She's a woman. She's dressed in the same sort of clothes his sister wears when she sneaks out the house. Black. Her skin is pale, as pale as the whitest of stars, lips dark. Her hair fans out around her head, a spiked halo, driving back his gaze.
But it is her eyes that terrify him, that allow him to recognize her from the temples. He had seen a statue of her not three months ago, when his uncle had finally succumbed and slipped away. At the funeral it had stood beside the coffin, beautiful and terrible, and he had wondered how his timid, gentle uncle could have faced something as horrifying as her.
She extends one finger to him and beckons.
He stands still for a fraction of a second, then runs down the steps.
He is seven hundred and sixty two.
They've broken through the right flank, floated down from above, killing all in their path. The left's holding – barely – but they are starting to bring up armour, and Rassilon knows that they couldn't hold against that.
The metallic cries of their enemies echo at them as they return fire, every shot killing five, twenty five, one lucky shot destroying over a hundred.
But it's not enough. There are only five with weapons great enough to inflict that much damage, and he is one of them, crouched low in the grass as the blue bolts and golden waves of death sweep past.
Their allies are doing their best, but they are being slaughtered. He watches as another beautiful bird-like creature's brains boil within its skull, watches as another one is lit on fire.
Enough is enough, his mind cries, and he stands, sweeps with his arms like some terrible conductor, and eight of them are rent apart by the golden sweep of his attack. Another gesture, and a tank, burning in from the sky like a falling angel shatters like glass.
Then something hits him in the gut like a sledgehammer, and he falls, down, face first on the blue softness of the vegetation.
He can feel the wound. Feel its burning sharpness. Feel himself sliding away.
Then he sees her. She's leaning against the wreck of one of their war machines. She looks at him. Smiles.
Terror grips him. Not like this, he begs. Not like this. Not here, on a battlefield. Among friends, on the planet I love, at a time of my choosing. Not now.
He snarls, as anger overwhelms fear. Rises to his feet.
He'll show them. He'll show them how a Time Lord dies.
Another gesture with his arm, and the entire enemy right wing is forced back. Twirling his fingers and they disintegrate like sand. A flick of his left arm, and the great warship overhead explodes, like a third sun. They are starting to fall back under his attacks, and so he presses forward, laughing like a maniac as the blue lines streak past him.
I defy you death!, he screams, and she seems to hear him for she slowly fades from view. He continues to fight as his allies retreat around him, dragging him backwards still gesturing at the advancing enemy, ripping them apart, piece by bloody metallic piece.
It is only three hours later at headquarters that the stink of battle is suddenly, horrifyingly strong, and for a moment he remembers what he has done and vomits.
Then the medic is there again , and it is all soft words and glowing metal.
He is nine hundred and eight, and can feel the golden fires of this body's death burning in him.
He fears, fears so much, fears more than he has ever before that this time it will be the end. This wasn't exactly helped by the Ood appearing and saying cryptic messages, or the Master's insane laughter. It wasn't helped by the arrival of his second greatest terror, Gallifrey in judgement upon him.
And to think, he might be conquered by something as simple as radiation. He could almost hear her laughing. Come, Doctor, you can do better than that.
He snarls. A few more steps. He is inside his TARDIS now, inside her warm golden heat.
And then...
And then...
It was bursting from him, out of him, round him. One poet, long ago, had described it as being washed clean and made anew, like a bath.
He was right. If the bath was a bath of lava and sun plasma, while you used a shower nozzle filled with acid. He could feel his cells ripping themselves apart and closing back together again like fragments of rock from a hammer blow. Hear the horrifying shifts.
And then he was back. And alive.
He'd beaten her again.
He is nine hundred and nine.
He can see it in their faces, in the words muttered behind his back, see it in the deliberate theatricality of the envelope. Only one person in the whole wide world would dare, only one person could get a letter to someone as illusive as him.
The thing is, he thinks he knows what they might have seen. And it's the thing he fears most in the world.
He doesn't want to think she might have caught him, so he pretends not to know. He doesn't want to know. He can still stop it. He can. He's beaten time before, he's its master.
He just has to solve it.
He is one thousand five hundred and sixty three.
The light fades from him within his beloved TARDIS, and he smiles. Maybe this time he'll finally be ginger. He reaches for a mirror and –
Pauses. Those mocking lips. That halo of hair. He desperately raises a hand to those pale cheeks.
No. No. It's a trick. He couldn't have. He couldn't have.
In a panic, he throws aside the mirror. Hunts desperately for another one.
Those darkened eyes.
A camera then. Not much can deceive a good old fashioned camera. He runs through the long echoing halls till he finds one, manufactured many years ago on a dying planet by a race who couldn't paint.
Points it fearfully at himself and depresses the button.
The photo stares terrified back at him.
He sinks against the wall. 'It is a warning, then,' he says. 'A warning'.
'I am going to die.' He (maybe that should be she now, her brain half murmurs) laughs.
I'm not going to make it easy, she thinks. She won't catch me lying down. I've run before, but oh, I'll put light to shame this time. I'll run so fast nothing can catch me. Death may be waiting for me, but it'll have to wait a good while yet. Because though it may be my Destiny to die one day, I can change that day, run faster than his book can write. I can outpace this storm.
She grins. 'Catch me if you can.'
She is one thousand six hundred and forty nine.
She is walking through a market on a world with nine moons. It's ironic, as it itself is a moon of the vast gas giant that looms overhead like the fist of an angry god.
She doesn't have time to be thinking about the scenery. She needs to be watching the crowd. The phase-shifting armour she has concealed within her jacket and top will protect her from most things, but a hacker could reprogram it, a concentrated plasma burst could burn through it like it wasn't there, and any attacks above it would be just as effective. Not to mention rishellian knives, if there were any left in existence.
The weight of the tur'ah'ha'naka'n pulse rifle within the non-space of her jacket is comforting. They were outlawed long ago by her people, but they're all gone now, and she is alone. She can make her own rules. She has to keep on running.
She's made a key rule. Don't go back to earth. Earth would be – damaged by her being there. She carried bad luck like most people carried clothes, and she did not want any friends damaged by her inevitable death.
There was no joy any more in spinning silently through the confines of the vortex down through time. She had tried simply sitting in the TARDIS for thirty years, but that too had been soul-crushingly depressing. Not to mention dangerous, as for the first time in years it had been located, almost rent in two by the powerful singularity based weapons his foe had employed.
There was no joy anymore in emerging on a planet and solving a mystery. She could no longer put herself in danger for others, play the hero. She had to run, and run, and run. She emerged long enough to remain hidden then fled, leaving mysteries behind. She had no time for them. She has to outpace a book, for one day when its owner turns a page...
His sister will come.
She is one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine.
Today, even. The year of the French revolution she thinks hazily, through the fog of drugs that keep her bound in place at the heart of some collector's vault. She remembers, from long ago, a Dalek in a similar position.
Sympathy with a Dalek. She almost chuckles. Where would the madness end? The scientists come in now, with needles and electricity. They burn her, test her limits.
After their third broken neck they just leave her alone.
Three weeks without food later she slips her bonds, and stalks through the halls. They are silent, decorated with the implements of dying races, of long dead races. Her TARDIS is here somewhere, she knows it, the on-
She is stopped by a flicker from beside her.
Surely they wouldn't. Surely they must have recognised it for what it is.
The plaque simply says: ornate glove, unknown crystal, unknown purpose. Possibly decorative. Text undecipherable.
Her hands close almost reverently as she slides it from the podium. The alarms start then, but they don't matter. She hasn't even seen one of these since – Rassilon, since Arcadia.
Later, no-one was quite sure how she'd managed to destroy the station in three minutes, and then destroy the sixteen Shadow proclamation ships sent to detain her. What everyone remembered though was the long curving fingers of lightning that had closed on them, ripping them apart slowly like one might dismantle a banana or strawberry.
She'd always wondered why people had called her the Oncoming Storm. Now she knew.
She is one thousand nine hundred and two.
She is running across open ground, towards a field of tall green plants that murmur a lullaby of safety.
Behind her is a ship. It's shaped like a boomerang. Lasers pulse from it, ripping apart the large stationary lizard like creatures that gape at the sky as it flies overhead.
She's counting seconds. Some people had once told her that when you do this, time seems to slow around you.
She's found out this isn't true.
She flips, one handed, bringing up the pulse rifle in her other. A barrage of hyper- transluminal micro-EMP warheads speed towards the craft and rip into the vast shield. It barely shivers.
Time to turn up the heat, then.
The glove touching the ground reaches into it with its hardfields and nanobots, deep down, as far as it can without breaking coherence, touches a river of magma and wrenches it upwards into the ship.
The pillar of fire bursting from the ground crushes the shields in an instant, and burns through the hull. The wreck hits the grass and stays there.
She has cheated Death of another day.
She is two thousand. Exactly.
This very minute she was born. This second. She savours the feeling of reaching her second millennium, then returns to slaughtering the mindless cybernetic zombies that lurch moaning towards her. Once they were human, but now they have been altered, their memories wiped and slaves to some greater intelligence.
Once, long ago, when she was young and foolish she would have tried to save them. She doesn't have time now. She has to keep on running. Running and running and running. So she'll just kill them all. It's simpler, in the end.
After she has finished, she finds a little girl, crouched, shivering and tired in the corner. Once she would have taken the girl with her into the TARDIS, driven away the despair with the sheer beauty of the universe. Now she leaves without a second glance.
After the blue box has vanished, River Song, aged five, crawls out and finds the mess that was her mother's body and cries and cries and cries.
She is old now. Three thousand? Three and a half? Does it matter anymore?
She has run. And run. And run.
She lost the TARDIS some six hundred years ago. It was taken from her, and she didn't have the time, the courage to get it back. So she stole a vortex manipulator. And ran.
Her sonic screwdriver gave out. The Master was, somehow, still alive, and with a flick of his oh so smarmy laser screwdriver he had destroyed it. She had flayed him alive with her glove, removed his brain and crushed it. And ran.
Her glove too, had disappeared, into a vast black hole that appeared over a planet she was running across. Once she would have seen it coming, been able to stop it. Once she would have. But she didn't, and leaving it behind, she ran.
The pulse rifle still hung in her jacket. It was battered now, a huge chunk taken from the framework by a Slitheen with a grudge. It still worked. It was enough.
She ran.
She is three thousand three hundred and thirty three.
It's a funny old world, as she is being led to cell number three thousand three hundred and thirty three. She's due to be executed tomorrow. Theft. She tried to steal an apple. Ok, an apple made of gold with the power to overthrow kingdoms, but she was being paid for it.
She's so tired. She can't run any more. What's the point? Why should she go on living when there is nothing left to live for? No friends. No TARDIS. No screwdriver, no glove, no rifle, no-one and nothing. All is gone.
Maybe that's why she looks like she does. Maybe she looks like death because she has brought it, now to so many, and so many people and things close to her. All to avoid death. It sounds like some cautionary fairy tale.
The guard shoves her in. 'Song! Here's your new cell mate.'
She looks up from the floor and meets a terrified gaze. Her own eyes widen.
They speak simultaneously.
'Oh shit.'
'Impossible.'
A spark flutters in her heart.
Later, as they are breaking out, they come across a dusty old blue box in storage, a light on its top. She almost cackles with delight. She'd forgotten how fun this could be.
She is...oh who cares anyway? She's happy, for the first time in nearly two thousand years a grin is almost always stretched across her face.
They were having a water pistol fight on board the beautiful, marvellous, splendiferous TARDIS when they first kissed. That first kiss was all passion and fury and a fire she hadn't felt since – well, ever.
Who would have thought that River Song – annoying, 'spoilers', River Song, would give her a reason not to fear death? A reason to run. Or lollop, or gallop, or skip joyfully up and down the control room.
She laughs as she feels River's arms wrap round her waist.
She is three thousand three hundred and forty.
She has married River Song. Last night, on New New California. Who names these damn planets anyway, they had muttered in beautiful synchronisation as they stepped off the TARDIS.
River knew her name now. His name. The gender thing still got her sometimes. It's hard to take someone seriously when they have a name of the opposite gender. Of course it was a name in High Gallifreyan which meant she probably couldn't tell, but it was still bothering her.
River tried to tell her something at breakfast. 'I – I was in prison, when we met, for –'
'I know. I know you, future you, long future ahead of you you. Remember? I must have worked it out the second, no, the third time we met.' Her smile is sympathetic, but something of the old fear lurks within her somewhere. She crushes it ruthlessly.
River swallowed. 'But you fear it so much. Couldn't I –'
'You can't. It's past now. Anyway, no-one can run for ever, love.' She kissed her hand.
A year later, River insists on going back to prison. 'I must pay,' she says. 'I must pay for what I did. I thought I was removing the world's greatest monster, and instead –'
'You did. I mean, I was a monster. Fear does that to people, and I could be monstrous before, anyway. You should have seen me as a seven year old.'
River manages a laugh. 'Oh, Doctor. You are so silly.'
And then she is gone.
She is three thousand three hundred and ninety seven.
She's been waiting. She's been invited to speak a lecture at a university. It's in the right time period. No Slitheen appear during the lecture. No Judoon transport it to the moon. No plastic store dummies. No maniacal ex Time-Lords with pocket watches appear, no mermaid-doctors, fish-vampires, or creatures whose names you forget as you look away.
A faint, writhing desperate coil of worry gnaws in her gut. What if there's nothing, what if it's as bad as you feared, what if there's a place where I'm punished for what I've done, what if it hurts.
Then suddenly she sees her. She's at the back, shorter hair, looking uncomfortable in a suit. Flaming, brilliant, a purpose and light in her eyes that she recognises in a second.
She smiles suddenly. It's going to be okay. Goddamn it, it's going to be okay.
'Questions?' The word bursts, half laughing, from her throat.
The hand at the back rises like the sun after a long day.
She points, and fear and anxiety suddenly overwhelm her. She's suddenly eight again, and looking into the vortex at that beautiful dark figure. The finger beckons.
Somewhere, very far away she hears a hand turn a page of a book in a garden.
She stands, reaches into a jacket.
She hears the name River Song and the pistol report. The impact with her chest is soft but she still falls back.
When she opens her eyes, she isn't on some meta plane. She isn't staring Death in the face. She's lying on her back in the lecture hall, the screams of the people around her. Hear River being dragged away by the police screaming and struggling.
That was pointless, she thinks. She stands. All for nothing, this fear?
'A little.'
She turns.
And is face to face with her. Black eyes meet black eyes. Black lips curl in identical grins.
'Damn. I thought maybe –'
'No such luck.' Her mouth is still a half smile. 'Why did you run?'
'I don't really know.' She desperately searches back to the moment when she was eight, when she saw the woman in front of her for the first time. 'It was stupid, wasn't it?'
'I've come for older.'
'I know.' The memory of a huge head lying on the floor, whispered words. 'What happens now? Is there a place after this? Is it timeless? Outside time? Inside it?'
She laughs, suddenly, they both laugh together. 'You're about to find out, I guess.'
'I should have been asking these questions from the start.' They grin again. 'I wanted to. I shouldn't have run.'
'I know. But my brother's book already had your life in it.'
Then she gestures. A black box appears with a whooshing noise, windows bright with interior light. A sign above the door reads Police Box. She grins and with a shift of her arm, the Police is crossed out and replaced with a different word.
She laughs again. 'Oh, you have a sense of humour. I'm going to love travelling with you.'
Hand in hand they pass through.