Weeks passed with the Doctor on the TARDIS, all flying together into the same animal. Every day was a new adventure, another facet of history that would come long after Maggie was meant to have lived, and another song to swim in her veins. It was like a drug, a sickeningly sweet addiction, this draw to melodies and rhythm. Every hour was a new lesson in social interaction, and future expectations. She even began to take higher stock in fashions of the years ahead. There was a strange, foreign sort of beauty to the girls in their short skirts and patterned jumpers, with their hair shining in different-patterned rivulets over their shoulders, and false spectacles to magnify their sparkling eyes. She began to modify her clothing to match with their styles, feeling a raw sort of longing to belong with them deep in her heart.
It was enough to exhaust a girl, and yet every night Maggie lie awake thinking of everything she had seen in the waking hours, turning over it all in her mind. Eventually sleep did sneak up on Maggie, though without her knowledge of it happening. She had the most peculiar dreams of flying on one of the aeroplanes the Doctor told her about, with Holmes and Watson sitting across from her dancing like the young people in the concert hall. They looked different, younger, wearing the same modern clothes as the ones she had seen in Seattle. Maggie listened, straining her ears for the sound of their music, but heard instead a cacophony of noise, the screeching and winding of the aeroplane's gears. How anyone could find this musical, she had no idea. The moment she realized there was no music Holmes and Watson stopped dancing and collapsed into seats opposite her, breathless. Then Watson pulled out his service revolver and shot her.
Maggie woke up with a gasp, clutching her chest for an imagined wound, then sat up. The sound she'd heard in the dream hadn't been all in her head, but was the noise of the TARDIS in the process of landing. Where was he taking her now?
She stopped quickly in the wardrobe room to change clothes - this time in a darker pair of jeans that fit better and a yellow shirt that seemed incomplete but had a picture of a duck on the front - before leaving her room in search of the strange man. "Doctor?" she called to no avail, but then heard another voice in the kitchen, and followed it.
"Oh, sweetie, what's got you so skittish now?" asked the woman in the kitchen. She sounded equal parts fond and amused, and Maggie didn't want to interrupt so instead waited outside.
The Doctor seemed to fumble around for a moment before replying. "I've got a new companion."
"Another human, I suppose? Where's your sense of adventure gone? Can't you get something carnivorous?"
Maggie furrowed her brow, leaning closer to the door.
"This one's from the year 1900, she's...different."
"Different, you say? Not going to go falling in love with her, are you, my love?"
A low chuckle. "Of course not, dear. Only one girl for me." Dear? Did the Doctor have a sweetheart after all? The very idea made Maggie smile to herself. Then she heard a buzz and the sound of sparks before the Doctor yelped with pain. "Ouch! Alright, alright, two! Two girls for me!"
"Going soft in your old age, sweetie?" laughed the woman in reply.
Old age? Maggie thought. But the Doctor looked no older to her than John Thomas, God rest him.
"I'm not that old," argued the Doctor, though there was a teasing quality to his voice that Maggie didn't understand. "When I was loomed my father was already three thousand."
Against all better judgment, she gasped, "What?" and swung into the kitchen. Immediately the Doctor and his lady friend turned to face her. The woman was very beautiful, though a bit old, it seemed, for such a young man. She had such wildly curly hair that one didn't know where it began or ended, and a razor-sharp smile that was warmed by the twinkle in her eyes.
"Oh, hello there, sweetie," said the woman, and Maggie, suddenly imagining herself to be at home, dropped into a curtsey before remembering herself and blushing.
"Beg pardon, I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but...did you really just say your father was three thousand years old?"
The Doctor smiled cryptically and leaned back against the kitchen table. "Maggie, this is River Song, my wife. River, Maggie Moss."
Still distracted, Maggie shook River's hand. "It's a pleasure," smiled River. She shook hands like a man.
"Likewi- your wife?" blurted Maggie, catching herself too late again. "My apologies! I simply didn't know the Doctor was married."
Mrs. Song seemed completely unbothered, crossing her arms and grinning. "It's alright, he doesn't tell many people. I was just dropping by before I'm needed back at the university; darling, I have news," she beamed, and that happiness seemed to reflect in the Doctor's face as he took his wife's hands.
"And what's that, love?"
Maggie lowered herself into a seat at the table, hoping her presence wasn't an intrusion on the couple's privacy. It seemed to be confirmed when neither of them objected, so she poured herself a cup of tea from the pot. "Actually, it's two things," explained the other woman tacitly, nearly vibrating with anticipation. "I've been speaking with the board of directors, and they've finally gotten me permission to go on an expedition to The Library!"
"No!"
Both Mrs. Song and Maggie jumped at the gravity of the Doctor's gasping shout, sending her teaspoon clattering to the floor while his wife furrowed her brow.
"No?" asked River, sounding slightly hurt.
The Doctor quickly shook his head and reinforced his grasp on his wife's hands. "Not like that!" he amended. "Sorry! I didn't mean it like no no, I meant it more in the...no! way. Like, you know, no!" Voice altered into one of excitement, the Doctor grinned and embraced his wife tenderly, continuing to speak into her shoulder. "I just...I know how long you've wanted to go to The Library...I'm so proud of you."
Maggie averted her gaze as the Doctor squeezed his eyes shut, hiding his face in the crook of River's shoulder for only a moment before pulling back and grinning. "Well! You said there was other news, what's the other news?" he went on to ask.
There was a long stretch of quiet as River seemed to contemplate her answer. In the interim, she made the Doctor sit, then fidgeted before him. It seemed most unusual for a woman such as River Song to fidget, even if Maggie had only known her for all of five minutes.
"Sweetie," she began slowly, her voice of the utmost calm. "You know how your - well, our - people were loomed?" The Doctor nodded blithely. "And you know how I'm half-human?" Again, he nodded, though Maggie was lost already. "And you know how we figured that our biologies didn't match up properly?"
Once again, the Doctor nodded, but then went ominously still as realization seemed to strike him. "You're pregnant." It was a statement, not a question, and Maggie was so shocked that she accidentally snorted tea out her nose.
"Sorry," she gasped when the pair turned to her, apparently having forgotten she was in the room. "I'll just...er...leave you to your privacy." Practically leaping up, she scuttled out of the kitchen and into the corridor, returning to her room.
Honestly, the depravity of it all! Certainly, the times had changed, but that didn't seem to garner the rights to prattle on about one's private life in...well, the privacy of their own kitchen. Still, they ought to have asked Maggie to leave, or at least taken the conversation to their own rooms. Then her mind turned to how the Doctor had reacted, not only to his wife being pregnant, but to the news of her expedition. He hadn't seemed pleased in the slightest, even if he did backtrack to say he was. She couldn't help wondering after the state of a marriage when the husband did not even mention to new acquaintances that he was married, or that neither of them wore rings. In fact...
The longer she thought, the more furious Maggie became, until ten minutes later the Doctor came rushing into her room, returned to his good spirits. "Maggie, we're going on a picnic at Asgaard; wear a jacke-what?" he asked, bewildered by her clenched fists and flushed cheeks.
"Do you have any regard for common decency?" she asked in a low voice. "You're a married man, yet you sweep a girl up off the streets and take her to another city, another time, in your machine?"
He seemed to realize his error, and took a step back with his hands placatingly up. "Now, Maggie, I've already told you I had no untoward intentions!"
Throwing her hands in the air, Maggie forced herself to release the noise of frustration she instinctually repressed after years of training by her mother. "What does that matter when so many things you've told me is a falsity? You say you are alone, and you have a wife. You say you don't want the future to frighten me, and you throw me headfirst into a confusing world of technology and noise! You say we will see the stars, and yet all we've been through is weeks of Earth, Earth, and more Earth!
"Who are you, Doctor? What are you, and why did you choose me for this endeavor?" she demanded at last, forced to sit on the edge of her bed to keep her knees from trembling. If ever she had spoken to her mother in such a way, she would have seen the sour end of a belt, and even if she did know that the Doctor was a good man, she didn't want to know what tragedy had made him so good.
The Doctor seemed to think about answering for a long time, lowering to sit at the foot of her bed as well. They had long since abandoned her attempts for privacy in her room, as it was the one request the man seemed to forget. "I'm the Doctor," he shrugged. "I'm a 1300-year-old Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey, in the constellation of Kasterborous: the Shining World of the Seven Systems. It's dead now, gone in a war, and my wife and I are the last of our kind. That'll have to be enough for now, as I left River in the console room and don't want her driving." He reached out and tentatively patted her knee.
"Your people are dead?" she asked softly, instantly regretting her anger.
The hand on her knee tightened briefly. "Yes, but that was a long time ago. You're right, we ought to understand one another better if we're going to continue to travel together, and as soon as this is over I'll explain things properly, yes?"
Maggie nodded, and the Doctor gave her enough time to run to the wardrobe for a jacket before leading the way to the console room. By the time they made it the Doctor was again smiling, and River was practically bouncing with excitement at the console. "Can we pick up Mum and Dad as well, make it a proper celebration?" she asked the moment they opened the door, nearly running to her husband's side.
"Of course we can!" the Doctor cried gleefully, already beginning to play with the controls of his ship. "Off to pick up the Ponds, not a proper party without the parents - are you going to tell them or shall I? Only I don't want your mum to slap me or something equally ridiculous, like setting the Roman on me."
Rather than replying, River merely laughed and held on tight. Taking this as a cue, Maggie grabbed onto the handrail just before everything went bonkers. Never before had she been so confused by a conversation, even after several weeks with the most unusual man in the universe.