The Doctor makes his cheerful way along the corridor towards cell forty-six, with just precisely the same look on his face as if he might suddenly begin to whistle a jaunty tune. That'll be nice for her, won't it? Let her know he's coming, let her know that happiness is just around the bend. Yes. Yes, he thinks he will whistle, and is trying to settle on a tune when all of a sudden, "Hello, stranger."
The Doctor stops. Mid-step. Thinking about that one for a second before he darts the rest of the way along and peers between the bars. Just checking. Just making sure that the woman in there is, in fact, his wife. "Sweetie, you mean," he says very slowly. "You mean, 'hello, sweetie.'"
"No," she smiles blithely. "I mean stranger. Hello, you bloody stranger. What's your name again?"
The Doctor shuffles into a more appropriate position; square in front of her, head down, hands folded. "Been a while, has it?"
"Any time I've had to take up a new hobby, it's been a while."
There are certain ways he could deal with this. Sadly, the only one that doesn't flash across his mind is simply saying 'Sorry'. He misses that one entirely. That one would let him do a little bit of apologizing and then they could both move on. But he doesn't think of that. He lifts his eyes, and catches the tiniest glimpse of a black top hat and some metal rings. He gets very excited and forgets all about 'sorry', jumping straight to, "Magic! You're learning magic! What's in your top hat, go on, show me. I bet there nothing, and then there's something."
"No," she snaps. Mostly because he hasn't said sorry. Partially because she hasn't quite perfected that one yet, and keeps pulling the false bottom out of the hat along with the teddy bear; Stormcage don't let convicted murderers keep sweet little bunny rabbits as pets.
"Well, show me something."
A child. A perpetual child. Every time she thinks she's getting over the rubbery youth of his current features, he gets excited, and bounces up and down on the bars demanding a magic trick.
She rolls her eyes. "Do you have a coin?" He faffs about in more pockets than River had believed he had until he finds one. An old Earth two-penny piece. She holds out her palm and has him place it there. Waves her other hand over it and makes it magically disappear into the crease of her thumb. "There. Happy?"
"I can make something disappear too!" he cries. "Hold on, have to get the Tardis in here." River drops abck down on her bunk while he calls it down with the sonic.
"Let me out of the cell first. You know the Tardis will set off the alarms, they'll move you out."
"No, I want to show you!"
"Open the bloody lock!"
"But look!" Even as the door handle is appearing, he's reaching for it. River cries out. He can't leave her here. Not after being gone so long, not without so much as a proper hello, not without getting her out of here for a while. "I'm not leaving you. It's something I've been working on, wait and see!"
She screams through her teeth as the door slams on her. The lights drop out and are replaced with the dim red glow of security. "Come back!" she calls, "It's the alarms!" But he can't hear her anymore. And even as he 'shows' her his new improvements to the Tardis cloaking device (yes, very funny, making it disappear, oh she gets it), she can hear the storming boots of the guards coming down to make sure River is still here. She watches with bored distaste as one, two, three of them run right into the invisible time machine, one right after the other.
From beyond the formerly-blue-now-invisible door, "River? River, sorry! I don't think we're going ut tonight. I think I'm being removed from the premises!"
Revenge can be so very sweet. River has planned hers so very, very carefully, and now the crucial moment is upon her. She is hidden, trembling with righteous delight, behind the hatstand near the Tardis door. No one knows. Not her husband, not her parents. It's time she feels sorry for. They'll have to put up with him when he starts moaning about it.
She has her manipulator set and ready to take her home when her task is done. She has her fingers crossed that her dates and times are right.
It's going to be beautiful.
Then it begins.
"Amy!" The cry, piercing and louder than any noise the Tardis can make by herself, comes barrelling up one of the halls that feed the console room. "Amy!"
River watches her mother rush out onto the gallery, so fast she almost comes over the rail. "What? What is it, what's the matter?!"
"Nothing's the matter!" The Doctor skids into the room. River wraps herself a little better in one of his old coats, but there's no chance of him noticing her. A puppy that's just spotted a bird is no longer distracted by an old shoe. "Nothing at all! This is wonderful news!"
This time Amy is the one left rolling her eyes. "Well, thank you for the heart attack."
"Amy, do you remember when we landed?" he cries, ignoring her concerns. River's heart swells with sympathy for her poor mother. "Do you remember, and I said, there's something special about that date, but I didn't know what it was?"
"You've remembered, then."
The Doctor sinks a little. "Amy, please be excited. Be a little bit excited?"
Pouting, teasing him, "Why should I?"
His little dance starts at his ankles, works up through his knees and hips and is just lifting up his arms when he tells her, "This is my birthday! My original, natural birthday, not just the next-three-hundred-and-sixty-fifth-day sort of birthday, this is the actual date I was born on! I never manage to land on this date! Now I don't actually know what's outside the door right now, but I'll bet I can turn it into a party."
His glow is infectious. Amy starts to catch it. River watches it spread across her face before she turns away from the rail. Shouts on her way back down the hall, "Rory! Best shirt on, please!" The Doctor laughs to hear this and runs off in his own direction. To put his tuxedo on, River knows well. She cringes even to think of it. She cringes even more deeply when (and she's not kidding, she wishes she was, but she's not) he jumps up and clicks his heels.
Clicks his heels, ladies and gentlemen…
Tell her she's not justified. Tell her she's not doing the right thing. Tell her he doesn't have it coming, when she slips out from behind his coat and climbs the steps. Runs her tender fingers over the console and, for lack of a more-accurate description, sets the Tardis to shuffle.
The noises of take-off seem louder than usual, rattling and reluctant. From far away (from the wardrobe, specifically) she hears the cry of, "No!" winding up and up.
That's all the revenge she needs. As her night out disappeared before her eyes, the Doctor's birthday vanishes from his very hands. River is just guttering out of view as he bursts broken-hearted back into the room.
There is not a lot of room beneath a prison bunk. For the positives, this severely reduces the risk of monsters. The Doctor is happy to know there is a very low risk of finding monsters under his wife's bed.
For the negatives, it's a bit claustrophobic, and there's no room at all to read the book he brought with him.
It would have been a long day-and-a-half under here, if he hadn't been able to sonic Snake onto her manipulator. His record is 24, 873, 955, and counting.
He's not entirely sure where River is. He got a message about her having escaped, but he gets a lot of those. The details sort of blur together. He only listens to the ones that come from early in her timeline. Those are the ones where she might still pose a threat to him. It's about fifty-fifty whether she's gone shopping or gone to kill someone. He just waits, and eats the little flashing bricks, and tries not to bump into his own tail.
He's approaching his 25th millionth point when there's a bit of a barney, and the crash of the cell door. Honestly, he's a bit absorbed in the game. He doesn't really know what's going on until River throws herself down, and the thin prison mattress sinks down against his nose and chin.
So he presses pause.
Shuffles over to the wall and hisses up the side of the bed, "Oi!" The weight of her above him goes statue-still. "River, it's me." She starts to roll. "No, don't look, you'll give us away."
From the corner of her mouth, "What're you doing?!"
"I'm really sorry. I'm sorry I didn't say sorry and I'm sorry we didn't go out and I'm really, really sorry I drove you to taking my birthday away."
"You're hiding under my bed to apologize?" she balks.
"No, no, no. I'm hiding under your bed to do more magic."
"Oh, heavens, at least wait until the guards are gone before you start talking like that."
He wriggles his hand up by the mattress and strokes a handful of her hair. "For my next trick," he says, "I'm going to make a maximum security prisoner disappear." In the next second, they're out of there. This means two things. Firstly, he's made his apology, and made it in fine style. Secondly, the bed is no longer between them, and he wraps his arms around her as she falls on him. She laughs when he rolls her away, turns back to lie under his arm. Sheepishly, he asks, "Is the bad Doctor forgiven?"
"Abracadabra," she murmurs, and kisses his cheek.
Time passes. The next time River travels with the Tardis, there are only three of them. It's funny, she could swear there used to be four. But she couldn't say who the fourth might have been.
And this, with a long, lashing creature flinging itself from tree to tree through the woods behind them, isn't really the time to be thinking about it.
The Doctor throws himself over a rocky edge, pulling Amy and River behind him. They huddle, hiding while they try and discuss matters. "Doctor?" Amy whispers, terrified. "Doctor, what was that thing? What does it want?"
She gets her explanation, not from him but from a new voice. Heavy hunting boots come through the undergrowth, and the creature that chased them is panting and slobbering while the voice calls, "Oh, Doctor Song? We know you're here, Doctor Song. Dagilus here can smell you, can't you, boy?" The lashing creature yelps like any other mutt.
The Doctor hangs his head and groans at her, "What did you do?"
"Don't worry, sweetie, I know how to fix this."
"Really? You know how to fix the relentless hound and its remorseless master? You can fix that, can you?"
"Yes," she tells him mildly.
"How, pray tell?"
"My next trick," she smiles. "It's two tricks, actually. First I make this manipulator you thought you took off me appear out of my jacket-" He is just shocked enough that she has time to set it. "-And then it's see-you-later. Bye bye!"
That one takes some beating. Giving up a grand, wild adventure to keep him and Amelia safe. That's selfless and saintly and an act of utter martyrdom. It takes work to top her this time.
Naturally he manages it. It's a while later. Actually, he doesn't top this latest disappearance until a lot later on. But that's time travel for you. It doesn't matter how things synchronize, just so long as they get done. Most of the time. Sometimes it matters. Playing tit-for-tat with one's wife, that can usually wait a bit.
He turned a coin into a Tardis. He turned a birthday into a convict.
Eventually, then, he'll turn her sacrifice into her freedom.
That probably won't be the first thing that goes through the Stormcage Governor's head when he finds a supposedly-dead-Time-Lord singing Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better in his office, dancing bare-chested around the desk while two monitors show the continued beating of both his hearts, and very much alive. "Not-deeeead," he'll be chanting, to the tune of the earth football chant of 'Ole!', "Not-dead-not-dead-not-dead-not-dead, not-deaaad, no-oh-t-deeeeadd!"
"So nobody killed me," he'll add, in case that isn't clear. "So let my wife out, please."
River has forgotten all about tricks and private jokes when she slips into the royal vaults of the Starship Brittania. She hides herself in a statue during the visiting hours and creeps out around the laser security between the guard's rounds. Crosses the room in intricate, balletic arabesques to avoid four different kinds of sensor and uses the very thinnest carbon blade to move an ancient Van Gogh down from its alarmed bracket.
It's only after she cuts it from the frame, thinking of him, all for him, only for him. It's only after she rolls it up and slides it into the carrier tube. It's only when she looks at the ragged edges in the empty frame that she thinks that most excellent word, "Alakazam."
And then the world is ending. It's collapsing in on itself. Cracks are becoming rifts, angles no longer meet, a load-bearing wall has been removed and no RSJ put in to take the weight. It's breaking, and at the centre of it all is an exploding Tardis.
The Doctor looks at the black and filigree of the Pandorica and knows what has to be done. Haggard and wordless and, yes, scared, he hauls himself up into that chair. Into its shackles. Remembering why it was built. He remembers those infinite minutes, infinitely dark, when it was put to that purpose.
But this is good. This is better. This is taking something terrible and turning it to a better, nobler use.
What follows is hazy. There's Amelia. There are all the things he wants to tell her. All the comfort and all the bombast and all the amazing things that are coming to her that he wants to tell her all about. He has the breath and energy for only one word, and chooses it well. Geronimo.
Then hurtling. 'Hurtling' is very much the word that springs to mind. Barrelling through the air towards that mockery-sun, what his beautiful machine has come to.
Still, he manages the dimmest little edge of a smile, even as the end approaches. Because he can't go out without saying goodbye to River, can he? Wryly, silently, thinking it to her across all the aeons as they disappear from him, he tells her in the very best way he knows how:
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages. See, how I turn out my pockets! See, there is nothing up my sleeve!
Now watch. My greatest (and very possibly final) trick.
Watch, if you dare, and before your very eyes, I shall make a universe…
Disappear.