A tourist in the waking world
S4-S6; river song, doctor, doctor/river (dr who)
Days bleed into nights, bleed into weeks, bleed into months.
-o-
Seems that I have been held, in some dreaming state
A tourist in the waking world, never quite awake
-o-
One.
The guard throws her into the cell and she lands hard on the stone floor. She drags herself upward, her body protesting, and cries out when she is flung across the room. A boot connects with her stomach and she curls into herself, closes her eyes as the blows rain down.
"Feeling okay, Doctor Song?" he asks sarcastically.
She rolls onto her side and glares, but says nothing.
(Two weeks later she escapes prison for the first time and doesn't bat an eyelid when she shoots him with his own gun.)
-o-
She spits blood into the sink and a tooth clinks against the porcelain. She had only been outside for a month before the landlord she'd been staying with had contacted the church. Her stomach heaves and she throws up bile. Her hair falls forward and she jumps when a hand pulls it back from her face.
"Who are you?" she asks, pushing the stranger away and backing herself into a corner, her eyes darting about the bathroom.
He straightens his bow-tie and gives her a smile. "I'm the doctor," he answers, as if that should mean something. His expression changes when he looks at her properly, sees the bruises that mark her skin, the scratches on her face and arms. "What happened?" he says and part of her wants to cry because he sounds so concerned.
"Nothing," she responds finally, and he frowns at her obvious lie.
"Do you remember me, River?" he asks and she shakes her head.
He sighs heavily, as if the weight of the world is on his shoulders, and turns away.
"I should go," he mutters, "spoilers."
River follows him but by the time she's stepped into the next room, he's gone. She grits her teeth, then pauses when she spots the large pile of books on her bed. For research, the note reads on the topmost book.
She flicks open to the first page.
-o-
She spends her days trying to remember why she's locked away. "You killed a good man," she remembers the judge saying, "a very good man."
Flashes of a lake, a spacesuit, the doctor and then all goes blank in her mind. It drives her mad and she goes through her books searching for answers. Slowly, she starts piecing the events together and she writes every shard of memory, every piece of information cleaned from every book into her blue notebook.
A list forms: Madame Kavorian, the Silence, Colonel Manton and her pen nearly pierces the page as her anger and frustration grow.
-o-
Days bleed into nights, bleed into weeks, bleed into months and it's only because of a guard's slip of the tongue that she realises a full year has passed since her incarceration. She wants to scream, wants to claw at the world but settles for tearing the list of names from her notebook and sticking it to the wall.
She steps back and gives a grim smile and starts planning her next escape.
-o-
Two.
The winter chill makes her hands shake and she shivers as the wind buffets through the window, a few snowflakes slipping through the steel bars to land on her shoulders. She leans against the windowsill and looks down, fancies she can still see Madame Kavorian's blood beneath her fingernails.
"How long are you going to pretend not to be there?" she asks the seemingly-empty cell.
The doctor steps out of the shadows, shameless, and sits on her bed.
"Hello, River."
She turns to face him, unamused, and watches as his eyes flicker up-and-down her body, widening when he spots the blood on her boots.
"What-?"
"Madame Kavorian," she interrupts, answering his unfinished question.
He frowns and she recognises the emotions that flicker across his face: shame, hurt, anger, pride; all in a matter of seconds.
"You didn't need to do that," he says heavily.
"Because you'll always come to whisk me away, husband?" she snaps.
He recoils as if slapped and she turns her back on him and looks back out the window. The bed creaks as he rises to his feet and crosses the length of the cell. The bars close behind him quietly and she hangs her head.
She can hear too much, the sound of his tweed rustling in the corridor.
-o-
In time, she procures a calender, and crosses the days off in red marker. Next to it, her hand-written list still hangs, Madame Kavorian's name almost obscured by red. Beneath, Colonel Manton's name, in smaller writing and she frowns, struggling to remember what he looks like.
She hears footsteps behind her and isn't surprised to hear the doctor's voice a moment later.
"I don't think that's a good idea," he says, "revenge is never as good as it sounds."
Her head snaps towards him and her eyes blaze. "If this were just about revenge, do you really think you'd still be-?"
She doesn't get a chance to finish her sentence when he puts a finger against her lips. River stiffens as his hand cups her cheek and he's looking at her with such love in his eyes that she finds it absolutely terrifying.
"Would you believe that I've just said 'goodbye' to you?" he asks with a soft laugh. "A long goodbye," he admits, a blush rising to his cheeks, "and I programmed the tardis to take me back to you then but must have hit the wrong co-ordinates..."
"No," River interrupts, "sometimes she just ignores you and-"
"Takes me where I'm needed," the doctor finishes.
It's not a surprise when he kisses her; what is asurprise is how long she lets him.
-o-
Three.
She expects the next year to feel different, but nothing changes. The sun still rises and sets, the same anger still floods through her veins. Only the doctor is an anomaly in her tedious existence.
"Hello," he greets one evening and she turns.
His face falls for a brief moment, but its enough for her to realise that he wants to see the future her, not her now.
"Sorry to disappoint you," she says sarcastically.
He shakes his head, panic-stricken, and starts babbling. "No, I didn't mean-"
"Yes, you did," she snarls back.
She stalks across the room and stands in front of her calender, the red crosses mocking her in their sheer number. The doctor's eyes follow her and she hears his sharp intake of breath when he sees The Silence not crossed out, but with 148 written in bright red marker by its side.
"You escape just so you can kill them?" he asks incredulously.
"It's more than you seem to do," she retorts and he staggers back as if her words were a physical blow.
"Fine," she hears his mutter as he stalks in the opposite direction. "Fine."
As if he's washing his hands of her.
-o-
Their next fight is loud, vicious, and she holds back tears as she looks about her cell at the sprawled contents all over the floor. Books thrown about, ornaments and knick-knacks hurled but the words...
A stifled sob escapes her lips and she hunches her shoulders, jumps when she hears "Doctor Song?" ever-so-softly. "Are you all right?"
She turns and sees a guard, Peter, his eyes showing concern and nothing else.
She bursts into tears.
-o-
Two years later, she tears down the list and the calender. Peter doesn't know what it means, but the doctor watches quietly with broken eyes.
"Do you love him?" he asks in her cell.
"That's none of your business," she says in lieu of an answer.
"Do you?" he repeats.
She turns her back on him and stares at the wall where the list used to hang. "I don't know."
But he knows her every tell, knows she really means 'yes' and then – just like that – he is gone.
(She learns later that he crossed into an alternate universe and sought out Rose Tyler, his former companion.)
-o-
Four.
Some days, she pretends that her entire past was a dream. No time with the doctor, no Melody Pond, no Silence; just her and Peter. Decent, kind, patient Peter who is everything a girl could want.
Then she glimpses her blue diary and knows that every second was real.
She watches Peter sleep, his light snores the only sound in the otherwise silent cell. The doctor coughs and she turns her head towards him and places a finger against her lips, signalling for him to be quiet.
"Your parents need you," he says.
"What do you mean?" River asks.
"I mean that we need to leave now."
Her eyes narrow and she looks pointedly at Peter. The doctor rolls his eyes and holds out his hand.
"I can have you back in two minutes."
She glares at him but she gets to her feet without his assistance and strides past him and into the waiting tardis.
-o-
Six months down the track, she sprints as fast as she can toward the tardis, occasionally firing a shot over her shoulder. Rory holds the door open and she makes a flying leap and lands on the ship's floor. They're twisting and weaving through the air in an instant and the doctor rushes to her side and pulls her upright.
"You okay?" he whispers in her ear, his breath hot against her skin.
She nods and takes a step back. "Yes."
He opens his mouth as if to say something further but Rory appears and pushes him aside, his hands full of gauze and bandages.
"For your shoulder," he says and River glances down, sees the flesh wound she hadn't noticed.
"Of course."
For months afterward, she wonders what the doctor was going to say.
-o-
Five.
As the years pass, streaks of silver appear in Peter's hair, proof that time will stop only once. She wonders, briefly, if she should tear the universe apart again, knows such musings are foolish.
"Penny for your thoughts," Peter says, wrapping his arms around her waist.
"You deserve so much more than me," she whispers, not for the first time. Sometimes, she feels as if she can do nothing but sputter the same phrases day-in and day-out; a broken record whose needle stays resolutely in the groove.
He shakes his head and moves her hair to the side to press his lips to her neck. "Not true."
She closes her eyes and leans into him; his body a boundary, keeping the bad out and the good in.
-o-
A familiar noise catches her attention and she stands with her arms folded as the doctor steps out from the tardis. He grins as he approaches and spins in a circle, his arms out-stretched.
"Doctor River Song, what mischief have you got for me today?"
Her hand collides neatly with his cheek and his head whips to the side. She goes to hit him again but he catches her wrist easily and holds her still.
"And what was that one for?" he asks calmly.
"Grey hair," she mumbles and he frowns before his face smooths with understanding.
"It's the curse of the time-lords," he says, letting her go. "When we let ourselves love humans, we can never grow old with them."
"And what's your solution?" she demands.
He shrugs and – just for a moment – she sees his real age, the centuries-old time-lord that has lived alone for so long.
"I run away usually," he answers with a shrug of the shoulders.
She laughs, bitter and harsh. "Difficult when in prison."
The doctor takes a step forward, his eyes bright. "That said, I do have a time machine..."
-o-
They stay away for years and River watches from afar as Peter moves on, gets married, has children.
He looks happy, she thinks one afternoon as she spots him and his family in the park.
So much happier than he ever could be with me.
-o-
Six.
"Take me back," she says softly and the doctor's hand slips on the controls, sending them hurtling toward the 14th century.
"What? Why?" he asks once he has recovered himself.
"It's time," she answers.
He nods and punches in the coordinates. It doesn't take them long and as she steps out of the tardis, he takes her hand and pulls her close, his eyes full of unashamed pleading.
"Please, I don't want you to go," he says, choking on his words.
River slowly disentangles herself and walks to her bed and sits down, her eyes never leaving the ground.
-o-
She knows instinctively that he'll be away for a long time so she re-reads her books, updates her diary and settles back into the monotony of prison life.
-o-
Her peace is shattered by a simple phone call and she applies the hallucinogenic lipstick she has found so useful in the past. The painfully young guard looks apprehensive when she calls him over and she almost takes pity on him for the tongue-lashing he will undoubtedly receive after she's escaped her cell.
However, right now her focus is entirely on the Pandorica and finding Vincent Van Gogh's last painting.
-o-
The doctor she meets is young and has little-to-no idea who she is. And yet, he still follows the coordinates she leaves in place. By his side is her mother, fresh-faced and youthful, full of probing questions River cannot answer.
She gives thin responses that wouldn't stand up to any scrutiny and feels a part of herself die when she realises the doctor's grand plan.
"He doesn't really know me yet. Now, he never will."
She thinks her heart might shatter into little pieces.
-o-
Seven.
He gives her back her vortex manipulator and her diary and she reappears in her prison cell to find him sitting on her bed. He is older and looks tired in the dim light, as if he doesn't know how to move forward any more. His eyes widen when he sees her and he crosses the room in two long strides and pulls her close to his chest, burying his face in the crook of her neck.
"What's the matter?" she asks gently.
He raises his head to look her in the eye and any further words she may have had die in her throat. His lips aren't moving, but his voice is ringing in her ears. Are you my River Song yet? She nods and he laughs, his eyes bright. One of his hands slides down her back while the other cups her cheek, his thumb tracing small circles against her skin.
"Doctor-" she breathes but further words are lost when he crashes his lips against hers.
Its harder than their other kisses and her hands tangle in the tail of his shirt as she pulls herself closer.
-o-
Later, they're quiet and she barely hears the words he whispers in her ear.
"My River."
-o-
Disclaimer: I do not own Dr Who. It is the property of the BBC. No copyright infringement is intended. Title taken from "Blinding" by Florence and the Machine. Mentions of Doctor/Rose and River/OC. This is head!canon to the extreme so you are warned in advance. Spoilers for seasons 3-6.