summary: The Doctor learns exactly why he ever taught River about environment checks.
characters: River/Eleven, River's dads
warnings: au. spoilers all series.
disclaimer: fic•tion [fíksh'n]: literary works of imagination
author's notes: thank you to my lovely betas persiflage_1 and themirrorofsin
YOU WATCH US RUN
in all that we are losing aren't we just confusing;;
He starts noticing how sometimes River calls him her Doctor. At times it strikes him as strange, because she's seen other versions of him (one at the least anyway) and she must know, realise that his Time Lord physique defines him as a creature under constant construction, constantly subject to change, even when his face stays the same.
But then she'll say something like "So, my Doctor. Where to now?" and he realises that the endearment might just be the first step towards sweetie. He can't help but wonder if besides River or Song, he'll ever be able to call her anything else.
"So what's the plan then?" the Doctor asks, running after River for the TARDIS doors, his bare feet leaving wet footprints where they connect with the floor. Yeah, so he just had to take a look at those Jagrafess nests when they had happened upon them. River had warned him he'd make a mess of things and had dutifully kept her distance (he suspects she did this just to tell him I told you so afterwards) until he had indeed got stuck in the mud pool and River had to come and pull him out.
I told you so! she'd shouted, pulling at his arm, but when her trousers too had become mud-smeared she'd simply refused to help him out further. Served him right to get stuck and lose his shoes, she said.
"Shower," River now says, giving herself a quick once-over. "Dinner with dads, and then..." River purses her lips (he's not quite ready to admit even to himself it's absolutely adorable) and drowns in thought, her eyes focusing back on him countless seconds later. "Surprise me," she adds and smiles, turning on her heels to open the doors.
He's busy thinking up possible destinations, like Ancient Egypt with its myths of monsters with a body that's part lion, crocodile and hippopotamus, how he would sound surprised to hear that tale from her, but spin it around and have her disbelieving once he told her Cleo kept the thing for a pet (the alien, yes, Ammut was in fact an alien).
Or maybe something a little more simple (yet no less impressive) like Ramses the Second building Abu Simbel – he's lost in thought (and his feet are getting cold – type 40 TARDISes do not have floor heating) and he misses it – River's strangled scream right outside the doors, the acidic smell wafting in through the door-ajar.
And then he's running.
"River!" he shouts, without first checking where she is or what has happened, because he already knows. There's only one thing that produces that kind of smell. Bombs. "River," he breaths, only just like her he's staring out over the vast deadness in front of him, burned earth, torn down buildings and a rain of ashes down on them. No, oh no.
River has slumped down on her knees, muddy clothes now being soiled with ashes too, her hands digging into layers of it and an unuttered scream right at the back of her throat.
Did he? – no, he couldn't have, this is the right place, the same place, her time, only right now there seems to be nothing left of her world. It's all gone up in flames.
Could he have stopped this? No, of course not, fixed event, all he has to offer now is her life-continued – he has to get her back in the TARDIS, out of this wasteland of radiation.
"River." He goes to his knees next to her and grabs her shoulders. "River, we have to go," he says, trying to get her to budge by even the smallest inch. "The radiation..." it'll kill her that's what, and he won't ever watch her die again.
"Why would..." River chokes out, eyelashes sticking with tears and black ash. "Who would do this?"
"River please," he begs and puts both hands on her face, forcing her to look at him. "There's nothing you can do now," he says, his fingers leaving back smudges behind on her normally cream-coloured skin. She looks at him just like he'd expected she would; pleading with him to turn the world upside down. "Please, River, you have to move." He pulls her up in his arms, gangly but for this one exceptional time not clumsy and walks her back inside the TARDIS.
He rushes her to the decon shower and for a long forgotten time she just stands, fully clothed, letting the water tangle her hair, soaking her clothes, overflowing with the sorrow she now has the privilege of feeling. Something inside him burns, somewhere deep between his hearts when he stops to think how ages ago he did stop Magnus Greel, how so long ago already he might have walked in the cinders of her fathers' ashes.
But no, no! He can't stop this and Lord knows he'll never break the rules again like he once had on Mars, but no, this can't happen, not to River. Her home gone, her family gone, yes, sorrow is a privilege to feel, so much better than forgetting, but no, he won't let this become actuality for her.
Against his better judgement he leaves River alone with her sorrow, but marches steadfastly to the control room, types in numbers and one date where he knows he won't be crossing his own or River's time line (he could, but that would complicate things) and only pauses at the doors to listen to the sounds of the shower in River's room being turned on. He opens the door with not the most singular hesitation. If there is one purpose he can serve in this entirety of time and space, let it be this one. What else is the point of him?
He finds River again in the shower half an hour later, stripped of all her clothes, hugging her knees to her chest. He wants to tell her everything will be alright, knowing it's no longer a lie, wants to say to her that he knows how it feels, but he knows that right now he doesn't have the right to make his grief more important that hers-present. No matter what he does, and no matter what he's just done for her, her home is still destroyed.
Instead of speaking he grabs one of the blue towels dangling from one of the little hooks outside the doors and turns off the water before getting into the cabin with her. He wraps the large towel around her as best he can, patting her dry, though her long blonde hair leaves wet stains all over his own clothing. And then he just holds her.
"I'm sorry," he whispers and kisses her hair. "I'm so sorry."
It's only minutes later, the sound of River's sobbing levelling out, that he feels her hand creeping up his arm and holding onto it for dear life. He knows that she wants to continue crying, that she wants to scream at the universe, and perhaps even at him, to take back this travesty, to reclaim the events and regurgitate an entirely different scenario where her dads are still alive or maybe just, quite simply, one where she had left them a goodbye note.
He can't understand why she doesn't.
When he sits her down on her bed, she's just staring blankly out in front of her, looking for God knows what in the shallows of the TARDIS. He examines her without her taking notice; the radiation doesn't seem to have affected her, there's only a little patch of skin right above her eyebrow that seems a little scorched. He soon fixes that with his sonic screwdriver.
"There you go," he says, "No damage done." He realises too late they're the wrong words. "I'm sorry." He goes to his knees in front of her again and looks up at her. A single tear runs over her cheek, but she hunches forward and puts her forehead against his. "I'm so sorry."
He could have gone straight into the eye of the storm with her, up in tears and some-such pain but strengthened, invigorated from the core just by knowing that he was taking her to save her fathers. He could have taken her back further, left her warning them about impending cataclysm. But all those scenarios would leave her fathers with questions, well, more than they already had anyway, and he knows neither of them is ready for that.
All they know is that she's travelling with a Doctor, that sometimes she comes home and hugs them more than she ever used to, that she's sadder on rare occasions, but sometimes she's happier because she's seen the wonders of the universe played out right in front of her and all she can think about is going home to bask in that feeling, shared in secret with the two other most important men in her life.
He doesn't want to think about who River would be without a home to go to.
He's just plotting out their next stop when River finds him in the control room; he's changed shirts, because he doesn't want to see her tears now forever salty-stained in his other one. She's still shaking, her hair a mess, eyes blood-shot, hugging arms around her. "Where do I go now?" River asks, because even she knows she can't stay here, not in this here time machine, it has this way of getting to people (and he doesn't look like people, though it can be argued that centuries spend inside a mad box – hang on, not right – a box has made him somewhat of a madman). "Where do I belong?"
"River, I've told you," he starts, only he hasn't told her, not really, he's just begged her to keep hoping. "Your fathers might still be alive. There will be survivors." And that's exactly where he's taking her, to go find her parents.
She wanders over to him aimlessly, fondling the zigzag-plotter and other harmless controls she finds, and bites the inside of her cheek to keep from crying again. "River Song," he says, and can't imagine ever calling her anything else. He walks over to her, puts both his hands on her face, and forces her to look at him. "If there is one thing that I believe in, that I hold as absolute truth in all of space and time, is that there is always hope." And then he kisses her forehead and hugs her.
Any moment now, he'll start crying himself.
"Doctor, please," River sighs and he can see her shoulders slump in defeat. He looks at her, and she looks back, her eyes begging him for something that he needs to learn to translate, because this is one language he's not altogether sure he still speaks. "I don't know how much more of this I can take." But he can't say anything, he can't tell her that he's saved her fathers, that he knows they're around here somewhere, because that's interfering in a life starting to become too precious to him already. He needs to see her do this.
"River?" a voice sounds, and River's eyes go wide – her heart, skipping a beat, almost jumps out of her chest, he can tell. And then the Doctor's smiling at her, because he's facing her and he already knows (without really having to see) what she'll find behind her.
"Dad?" River says in the same tick it takes her to turn around, and she's running before even knowing if she's right. Her professor father's arms are embracing her seconds later, when other dad joins them too. River has too few arms to hug them both properly, but she tries. "Oh my God, dad. I thought I'd lost you!"
"We've been worried," Professor Song says, his hand coming to rest at the back of River's head.
"I'm sorry, I..." River buries her face in his chest. No, she can't tell them what she saw, what she thought had happened to them. "But how did you..." River asks, but she had really – she had seen, felt it, believed it.
"We only did what you asked us."
"What I..." River frowns, and looks up at both her dads, standing in front of her, alive, while all reason had told her they'd be gone, dead, lost forever to bombs whose smell she would never forget again. But they're here, right here in front of her, telling her impossible – oh that's right, there's only one thing in this entire expanse of space-time that's even more impossible. "Yeah," she smiles through her tears. "Good." She nods, and sniffles loudly.
Both his hearts skip a beat when River turns to look at him again.
Did she just – no, she couldn't have – put two and two together? – no, impossible, could she, oh, no. Every time, all the time there are new surprises he uncovers, and he can't help but wonder just how wibbly their timeline has already been at this point. But she couldn't have, not for sure, she's been with him since the bombs dropped over her home.
"Dad," she only says it once because both her dads respond to the one-name. "There's someone I'd like you to finally meet." He can't believe he's hearing it when the words reach his ears, but then there's River, stretching a hand out towards him, asking him something in a language older than even the universe he knows.
He hesitates, because he doesn't want credit, least of all from her, least of all from them, all he needs – needs to know is that he saved someone. Save them – he did it once for Donna at great risk, how could he not for River? He knows that kind of reasoning makes him Eleven, and it's probably also what makes him River's Doctor.
He takes her hand. River introduces her as the Doctor.
Her Doctor.
There's another hillside, a new hillside soon to become theirs again, that looks out over the temporary camps set up for the survivors of the bombings. River's staring out over the vast outreaches of the countless tents, her eyes orange in the light of the setting sun. "So..." he says and goes to stand beside her, hands in his pockets.
"You're an impossible man," River says, sighs, only he's not sure he understands why. "Maybe I'm just being selfish." She turns and faces him.
"What for?" the Doctor asks.
"For wanting the best of both worlds."
Ah yes, here they are. Again. "You're staying," he realises.
"You're not."
Again he hesitates, but he knows that after almost a millennium of travel, he's hardly one for staying put in one place and time. Not to mention the right order of things. "This life isn't for me." He probably admits to too much in those few words, and he thinks that's maybe why he doesn't look at her when he says it.
But when he looks up River is smiling at him. "Okay then, my Doctor," she says, and hooks her arm in his, resting her head on his shoulder. "I'm staying here for a while."
He doesn't say anything else, not while they watch the sun set behind the horizon, not even when he says goodbye to her half an hour later. He knows he doesn't have to.
Next time he sees her, for some reason, she runs up to him in the TARDIS, throws her arms around him, and just holds on for long moments.
"Hello, pretty boy," she smiles at him, and keeps her hands positioned on his shoulders. He stares at her hands suspiciously, wondering when in the next few seconds they'll wander down to more private areas of his body. But they don't. "Where are you whisking me off to?"
"First, I think I need to teach you a thing or two about environment checks." He'd never seen the point of them, and the only ones that'll have to adhere to the rules right now will be Amy and River, but if it means keeping them just a little bit safer, he'll gladly make that sacrifice.
"Environment checks?" River asks, less than impressed.
"Environment checks." He nods promptly. "Quite right. Very important," he adds, and starts tinkering with the monitor. "Might end up saving your life one day." He adjust the monitor so they can both take a proper look at it, but finds River smiling at him. "What?" he asks, wondering what he's said wrong.
But instead of saying anything, River digs around in her bag, fetching from it a small blue book.
It's the first time he sees it, well, from her point of view that is.
But it won't be the last.
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