Incognito
By Laura Schiller
Based on: Doctor Who
Copyright: BBC
"Is there nothing I can do for you?" asked Tasha Lem, standing in the doorway of the Christmas clock tower. Her face flickered in the lights of the gunfire and explosions outside; her voice, though gentle, cut neatly through the screams and thunder of battle. She looked regal, even now, in her dark glittering gown and elaborate hairdo. Even the scar on her forehead, where her Dalek eyestalk had come through a few centuries ago, did not diminish her beauty.
The Doctor regarded her with a wry smile, thinking that for once, this powerful, sensual woman actually sounded like a nun. A nun granting last rites to a dying man. It didn't suit her at all … or else, perhaps it suited her too well. Too well, at least, for his peace of mind at a time when he was supposed to be dying.
"You can, as a matter of fact," he rasped, in a voice as worn out with nine hundred years of fighting as the rest of him. "You can tell me who you really are and what you're up to."
Tasha barely blinked. "Whatever do you mean?"
He sighed heavily, fluttering some of the drawings on the wall. Much as he'd always loved their games, this was not the time for them.
"River … did you honestly think I wouldn't know you, whatever name and body you were using?"
This time, even Tasha's poker face failed her. She turned pale, then flushed. Her hand clenched at her side as if to draw an invisible gun, even though as Mother Superius she never carried weapons. Finally, she lifted her head and smiled an unsteady little smile.
"Hello, sweetie," she whispered.
The voice was different, but the tone was pure River Song. She had breathed those words just like that when she kissed him and gave him all her remaining lives, and when she met him in the Library just before her death. He would have known her anywhere.
He might be a bit too old for passionate displays, but he still held out his arms to her. She took his hands in hers, kissed him on the forehead, and sat down in the chair opposite hers.
"I should have known I wouldn't get anything past you," she said, shaking her head. "You're infuriating that way."
"Well, so are you," said the Doctor, falling back into their old rhythm as easily as breathing. "Why didn't you tell me earlier?"
"Well, why didn't you tell me that you recognized me?" she flashed. "How long have you known?"
"Since the first time we were alone together on that altar-bed of yours. Very stylish, by the way."
Only his wife could speak of fear and bloodshed with that particular cat-in-the-cream purr, and yet show so much pride in arriving first to shield Trenzalore from the upcoming war.
"And you didn't tell me. You let me think … " For the briefest moment, there was hurt in her eyes as well as irritation. Evidently, for all she hadn't wanted to be recognized, it had still worried her that her husband still seemed to be so oblivious of who she was.
"You let me think you were dead in that forsaken Library!" he barked. "How did you escape? And why, in the name of all that's holy, didn't you send me any word?"
"Because I was done with you!" Tasha's – River's – voice matched the sharpness of his own, but seeing his stooped figure, his cane beside him, the moonlight shining through his thin gray hair, she lowered it to a soft, regretful murmur. "At least … that's what I told myself."
The Doctor's hearts ached with centuries of guilt. Done with him? Yes, he could easily imagine why she, of all the people he had travelled with, must have wanted that.
"I don't know if you realize this, Doctor," she continued, looking at her own clasped hands in her lap instead of meeting his eyes, "But you were literally my reason for living. The blueprint from which I was made. First Kovarian, then my parents – in their different ways, they all raised me more or less in your image, with all the stories about you my little head could hold. Is it any wonder I became obsessed with you? I had no choice in the matter. And the worst part is, neither did you. You were trapped in this relationship from the moment I whispered your true name in the Library."
"I wouldn't change one moment of it, River," he said. "Not one line."
"I know, sweetie," said River. "Neither would I. But don't you see? I had to free us both."
Free. Of course. First Graystark Hall, then the space suit, then Stormcage, finally the Library. She had been imprisoned for so long on his account. No wonder she'd escaped – it was, after all, one of her specialties.
"Besides," she added, smiling deviously, "The temptation to outrank Kovarian was irresistible. Oh, don't worry, I behaved myself for the most part. Whatever her reasons for seceding from the Mainframe, you can be sure I wasn't one of them."
Still, the glint in her eyes – though they were brown instead of grey now, and framed by the purple paint that marked her rank – told him that, in her own particular way, she had probably succeeded in making her childhood demon's life very difficult indeed. The Doctor did not pity Kovarian for an instant.
"How did you escape?" he asked again.
She held one delicate finger over her mouth. "That's classified."
Oh, that smug smile of hers! How exasperating he'd always found it in their early adventures. How he had missed it in those lonely months after Manhatten, and every day since then.
"New regeneration, new catch phrase, is that it? Hmph. I must say I prefer 'spoilers'."
"You don't get to decide what comes out of my mouth, Mr. 'Geronimo'."
"I know, I know. It's just been so long since I had the pleasure of winding you up."
They grinned at each other, and the fire in the wood stove seemed to burn several degrees warmer and brighter, in spite – or perhaps because – of the knowledge that the Doctor's chances to wind up River were running dangerously short.
"You can't stay long, you know," he said. "Much as I wish you would."
"I know."
"A good priest never abandons her flock, nor a general her troops. And you're both, now. Did I mention how terribly proud of you I am?"
"As a matter of fact, you didn't." There was sadness, a brittleness as of very old china, in her smile as she smoothed her gown and rose elegantly to her feet. "A certain frizzy-haired archeologist you once knew would have given anything to hear that. Even I am grateful."
"Well, I am. Many of my companions achieved greatness because of me … and don't look like that, it's a fact … but the best of them became great in spite of me. You, more than any of them."
For once, the witty and eloquent River Song was lost for a reply. In the silence, they could hear the faint, mechanical screech of Dalek voices in the town below.
"You're dying, aren't you?" she finally asked.
There was no use in denying it. Not to her, who had always been able to read him like a book.
"Yes."
River's face contorted in what might have been pain, grief, or even the remnants of her Dalek programming fighting for control. Her hand went to her forehead, covering her scar, until she made a fierce effort to pull herself together.
"Well, you needn't die alone. Not by Lake Silencio, and not today. Mother TARDIS and I will see to that. Whom should we bring? My parents?"
"Absolutely not!" he rasped, tapping the floor with his cane for emphasis. "The sight would haunt them every time they looked at my younger self. I've caused them enough trouble. Leave them in New York."
"Clara Oswald, then."
He was about to refuse her as well, when the memories hit him as sharply and vividly as if it had happened only yesterday. Oswin's Dalek voice defiantly affirming her humanity, just before the Asylum exploded in a ball of fire. Clara the governess's last tear melting every posessed snowman in London. A burned and mangled projection of future Clara stumbling desperately through the TARDIS. And her other deaths, so many of them, which he'd seen only from the corner of his eye, or else not at all. How often had she died for a Doctor who didn't even know her, without one friend to hold her hand and tell her everything would be all right? If she were here, wouldn't she insist on staying with him over all of his protests?
Promise me you'll never send me away again, she'd told him. He had lied to her.
"All right," he said gruffly.
River nodded.
There was no need for goodbye, or even I love you. Their eyes, and their last embrace, said it all. Then, in a rustle of sequined silk and a breath of perfume, she was gone.
/
Only later, as the streams of golden regeneration energy sent by the Time Lords poured into him like honey, did the Doctor understand. The insight blinded his old eyes nearly as much as the dazzling light itself. Regeneration energy, flowing freely through time and space with no obstacle to prevent it, and the Library only a few planetary systems over. There were several ways River could have used to escape: a Flesh avatar, a last-second teleport out of that chair; she could even have taken a leaf out of his book and borrowed (or stolen) the Tessalecta. Or else, it was entirely possible that his future self, with or without the help of allied Time Lords, would free her. But there was no doubt that, once she was free, she would have all the fresh new lives her hearts desired. A brand new start, on her own terms at last.
Tasha. Natalia. Christmas child, named for the time and place of her rebirth.
Oh River, you are brilliant.
Was she the one who had caused this miracle? Or was it Clara? Clara, who had pleaded with him to change the future, not to let Trenzalore become the site of his grave even when he'd already seen it. Without the open wound that was his timestream, without her loving, courageous jump into it after the Great Intelligence, without her echoes nurturing children and the progress of technology wherever they lived, how would history change? Or would her echoes still be there, preserved by her reality-bending ride in the Time Vortex outside the TARDIS door? Would she sleep more peacefully now, without a hundred thousand lives and deaths to haunt her dreams? Or would her sacrifice continue?
All he knew was that she would always be his impossible girl. If that anachronistic phone call in 1207 AD was to be their first meeting, so be it; give him a pretty voice asking for help and he would be right there, and her charm and cleverness would do the rest.
Clara and River, who had given up more for him than anyone should have to, and asked for nothing in return but companionship. How he loved them both, just as he had loved every single person he had ever travelled with. If he were really dying, there was no one he would rather have by his side.
Fortunately, though – or unfortunately, he thought, smirking at the Dalek ship that loomed above him – thanks to those two extraordinary women, he was not dying after all.
"Never," he shouted, waving his cane in triumph, "Tell me the rules!"