Girl Meets Boy, Both Love Another Boy
Author: Gyptian
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Humor, Romance, Timey-wimey
Disclaimer: Not mine.
The third time an ambitious young Time Agent heard about River Song, she was a girl who'd managed to raid one of the Agency's outposts. Both were still mortal, in their twenties.
They both still carried different names.
She let out a high screech when the door she thought she'd deadlocked slammed open.
"That's quite a note, little songbird. Care to sing a little tune about what you're doing here?"
She hated him the moment she saw his smug mug and his saunter.
He disliked her the moment he saw she'd been about to destroy the forty-eighth century in an explosion of chrono-kinetic energy. It would have left them both a bunch of free-floating atoms in a scrambled space-time.
"Watch what you're doing!" he snapped, smugness gone. That was the first inkling she had something was seriously wrong.
The second one was the fact she was convicted to eight years spent in isolation. She spent her time studying the history of everyone who messed with time and space.
It was the first time River Song went to jail. The first time she heard about the Doctor.
The first time Jack Harkness met her was five years later, when she escaped.
The new recruit supposed to guard her made the mistake of not cuffing her securely enough. She twisted his nose and whispered "tweet-tweet" in his ear.
It was the only time River Song saw Jack Harkness blush.
The next time they saw each other, in New New New New Zealand, during the election of its most famous president, the one responsible for the only time of true galactic peace from star-arm to star-arm, was at a cocktail party.
He called himself Jack Harkness, had laugh lines and pepper-and-salt around his ears. She didn't yet know why he laughed quite that hard when she called him "old man."
"Just wait, little songbird. You'll get the joke." He took her into an elegant waltz and an energetic jig.
During the next dance, a slow song from Javara 7, he drew her closer. Not for the seduction she'd half-hoped for just so she could turn him down, but so he could talk without anyone overhearing. "Don't give up. You'll see him again. Don't ever give up."
River Song didn't cry when she stood over the corpse of the Doctor. She hated him after he'd just killed two of her fellow crewmen. Only after she heard what they'd done to him before he had to seal them in the chamber where they'd freeze to death, did she feel the regret welling up like a great big dragon groaning in her stomach.
Only after she next met him did she start calling him 'amazing man'. He rescued the entire colony planet from a killer solar flare by repairing the sun shield. The night they spent together didn't hurt either. She started a diary when she realised he knew her a little too well for this to be his first time kissing his way down her stomach. This could become confusing.
She would never understand why he hadn't hated her, back then, when she'd aimed a gun at him. Timelines change, what bull. Some things just had to happen. Didn't they?
Jack Harkness once asked River Song how she managed to capture a Time Lord's interest long enough for their never-starting love affair to happen. She smiled up at him, both stood leaning against the railing of a mezzanine. "I surprised him before he could ever surprise me." Her eyes dropped back down, to where a man with a permanent bad hair day and a bow tie was showing Amy how to play "Do You Hear the People Sing?" on his sonic screwdriver.
"You met out of order." A dirty handkerchief knotted over one ear hid brown hair. Blue eyes looked brown behind a pair of yellow pilot glasses. No information scrolled over the glasses, for the moment.
"Not just that." River played with a lock of hair and canted her hips a little more obviously. When the Doctor looked up and narrowed his eyes, she smothered a smile. She needed to keep him on his toes. "I'm already dead, to him."
A shiver went down her companion's back. "Wh-what?"
"The first time he met me, I died." Her smile turned cold. "The greatest fear of any lover, but especially a long-lived one, is to see a partner die. I'm safe. I'm already dead." She shrugged. "Somehow he made his peace with it." She shifted a little closer to Jack.
He draped an arm across her shoulder. "I know what you're doing," he whispered. His breath whispered over her ear, raising goosebumps.
She looked up at him through her eyelashes. "Hmmm, but it's so amusing to watch the high and mighty Doctor pretend he hasn't noticed. He needs to be riled once in a while, to remind him he isn't just the conscience of the universe." She pushed a button on the side of his glasses. The station's logo, an eternity symbol, appeared before both his eyes. "The circle closed when we met. I'm safe."
One corner of his mouth curled up, equal parts bitterness and acknowledgement. "What about me, then? If you're safe, I should be even more so."
She shook her head, pushing two buttons at once. The logo winked out, with a nasty beep of complaint at the sudden shut-down.
He winced.
"No, you see, he doesn't understand how you could die, but he's still afraid of it. You already died once. You're dead and not dead, not ever dead."
She tilted her head down, so her hair fell forward a little. Their heads were close together. From the floor below they looked like they were kissing. She felt the Doctor's next glance turn into a glare, sliding over both of them.
"You mess with his understanding of the universe too much. He's more easily scared than humans by the unknown." She held up one finger and crooked it. "He needs to scratch until it doesn't itch any more."
He chuckled. "You make me sound like a flea." He took the lock of hair she'd twisted around, seperating strands from it with both hands so he now held her in a loose embrace.
The next time he spoke he sounded exactly like when he'd first arrested her. "And what's in it for you, little songbird? I know you. You wouldn't do anything if you didn't get something out of it."
She let out a silent breath, one hand tracing back and forth over the railing when she confessed, "The first time I met him, he died." More quietly, "I killed him."
His eyebrows hovered in the vicinity of his hairline when she glanced up. "And?"
"And?" she repeated, surprised.
"There's more to that story. There always is, with him. You keep coming back to him for a reason." he dropped her hair and leaned back against the railing.
Below, the Doctor and Amy had moved on to "Mary Had a Little Lamb". Apparently, simplicity was key when playing songs on a sonic screwdriver. A porterminal exploded a little ways away from them.
"And timelines change." River tilted her chin at the Doctor, who was arguing with station personell. "That's what he said, back then. Timelines change."
"So you keep meeting him to make that worth his while? To make sure your sin is erased? It doesn't work like that for time travellers." His eyes, when they met hers, were sober and frank. The lines of his face had become slightly more distinct in the three thousand years since she'd last seen him.
"Would it were that simple," she mused. "No, I keep meeting him because of who he is, because the universe is a fucked-up bitch."
A questioning noise came from his throat. She stopped pretending to seduce him and simply leaned next to him on the railing so the Doctor couldn't see what they said. A high note downstairs exploded several of the glasses behind the bar of the station cafe. She smiled when she heard the Doctor apologising. Only him.
"How do you do it?" River asked Jack. "You live forever. The reasons that make everything worth it fade. How do you keep going?"
He shrugged. "I live...it just happens. Something, or someone, usually happens before I have time to wallow too much." He cocked his head back. "Sometimes he helps that along a bit."
"This Doctor?"
"No, the twelfth, usually. His tenth incarnation did it once. This one hates me, I've only met him twice." He crossed his arms, his eyes warm again. "That's the danger with changing personalities."
"Yes." She paused for a moment before continuing. "He does not," she said slowly. "He – can't just live to let it happen. He needs to search for meaning constantly. Ever since he lost his entire world, I think, since he murdered his own people, perhaps even before. He needs to be shown the wonders of the universe."
One of his hands started playing with her hair again. "I thought he took others to see the stars?"
"Yes, or he wouldn't see them at all anymore. He needs to be told how miraculous the universe is."
"I thought he needed the ego-stroking." Jack Harkness looked lovely when he joked, all dimples and crinkles. She found it easy to be charmed by him, like always.
"He needs to be told he's special sometimes. Sometimes he needs to be told he's not special at all. Most of the time he works it out for himself when he has someone to talk at."
"At?"
When she began to answer his question, she realised she couldn't hear the Doctor downstairs anymore. A glance downstairs showed Amy now talking to Rory, who had returned with a hideously fancy jacket from one of the stores.
She opened her mouth to tell Jack, but stopped when she saw the mischief in his eyes. She could hear the Doctor calling for her from down one of the hallways when Jack grasped her chin and planted a kiss on her mouth. She put one hand on the back of his head.
They were rewarded by a loud squawk. "A pleasure to talk to you," he whispered against her lips.
"As always. You'll see me again." He only nodded, turned on a heel and fled.
She turned and walked up to block the Doctor's path, who looked a bit too much like he wanted to chase after the other man. "Who-?"
"Someone who was quite good for my ego, unlike you today, mister. Spending all your time with another woman like that."
She smiled when he didn't reply. She looked forward to a future in which he couldn't reply to her quips anymore.
He'd always had an answer ready in her past. Living her love life in reverse had its rewards.