AN ~ Ever since we found out about Clara, my friend and I have speculated a Nutcracker-based Xmas special this year. I am still working on A Kookaburra in a Gum Tree, but I couldn't be properly fluffy until I'd gotten this out of my head!
This is a bittersweet Manhattan-recovery-Xmas-prequel sort of fic based on the Doctor/Nutcracker analogy. Title is derived from one of the tracks on the Nutcracker soundtrack, 'Waltz for the Snowflakes.' I own neither DW nor the Nutcracker in any way, shape or form.
Anyway, enough of my ramblings. Enjoy.
A Waltz for Snowflakes
The door slid open, announced only by its drag along the floor, and the appearance of a rectangle of light in the wall. The Doctor did not flinch, and certainly did not look towards his visitor. It was the same every day. It had been for a week now – more frequently of late, actually.
"I said go away, River," the Doctor's mumbled voice came from the darkness. Following it, a Rubik's Cube cluttered to the ground at her feet. He wasn't even throwing things at her with the same gusto any more. River sighed, and pinched the skirt of her ankle-length white gown aside to bend slowly and pick up the cube.
"I'm all dressed up with nowhere to go," she said smoothly, pretending to be unfazed as she glided into the Doctor's unusually dark bedroom. "I was wondering if you might have any ideas?"
He huffed, and still did not move from where he lay on his back, almost like a corpse, on top of his new dark blue bed covers (which, River suspected, were only blue because he did not own any black bed covers) on an unexpectedly melodramatic four-poster double bed. River felt her sadness refreshed as she recalled the bright red and yellow sheets he used to love; the bunk beds, on which she doubted he had ever slept, but which he never failed to remind her were the coolest things in the universe – except of course bow ties, and perhaps fezzes.
The bed was not the only thing to have changed about this place since That Day. Amy's afterword had kept him going for a few hours, but the morning after, the Doctor had stormed in here changing everything, getting rid of anything that could remind him of Before. It was as if he had died again: he was no longer the same person, and was doing all he could to forget the one he had been. The telekinetic toy helicopter. The hammocks. The train set. All of it gone. As the days had passed, River had seen more and more of the Doctor's energy slip out of this room – and out of the Tardis as a whole, as the sentient machine felt her friend and master's grief. River's heart only sunk further as she set the Rubik's Cube down on a bookshelf by the door and noted with a frown that it was a shelf of dictionaries in various languages, and stuffy old volumes on Gallifreyan law, rather than encyclopaedias and novels and, more conspicuously, random and culturally-variant items of an interesting nature. Perhaps he had gotten fed up with her asking about them.
Never one to be held back from her purpose by what anyone wanted, River pulled one of the hefty legal volumes from the shelf and began to walk around with it, reading what she could aloud and in a terrible accent, and sounding out the words she did not know with equally painstaking incompetence.
"River..." the Doctor moaned.
"Mm?" she paused in her reading. He did not go on, so she did. She made it halfway down the page before he interrupted again.
"River!"
"Yes, sweetie?" Still he refused to say anything more, so River launched into it again, almost dancing now, taunting him. Anything to get a response. She had to break him out of this even if, right now, he hated her for it. Her resolve began to waver as he became increasingly uncomfortable: first covering his face with his hands, grinding his teeth together, closing his eyes, muttering corrections under his breath, and then moving his hands to his ears instead. Finally, he could take it no more, and sat up, yelling:
"River, that's ENOUGH!"
River stopped immediately; stopped moving, stopped talking. She even held her breath for a moment; not intentionally, but because her lungs refused to move to force the air out as her heart stuttered in her chest. It had all hit her at once, what she was doing: he already did not want to be disturbed, but here she was plaguing him with the words of an ancient, long-lost planet and people. One that he had destroyed, just as he felt he had done Amy and Rory and all his other companions. One that represented his home, and his family, just when he had been starting a new one over. But it was not only the Doctor's words that had alerted her to this. It was the humble strip of maroon fabric, about a foot long, curled up in the carpet at her feet.
Bitterly ashamed, River took a deep breath and closed the book. She lowered it to the ground and picked up the bow tie before straightening again and slowly approaching the bed.
"Doctor," she started humbly. His eyes were still closed, but he at least moved his hands off his ears, allowing his arms to fall by his side.
"Don't apologise, River," he suggested wearily. "I know you were just trying to help."
River looked at the floor, and at the bow tie as she twisted it between her fingers. Apologies always got stuck in her throat. She was glad the Doctor could pluck them out for her, because she had so very much to apologise to him for – though God knew he apologised enough for the both of them. But now was not a time for apologies. It would only make them feel even worse.
"Doctor," she began again, more certainly this time, "have you ever seen The Nutcracker?"
The Doctor carried on in his newly characteristic silence, but River felt the atmosphere of the Tardis shift. She was being listened to. Heartened by this realisation, she sat on the end of the bed as if telling a story to a small child. From her new angle, she could see that the Doctor's shirt hung open at his neck, and that his floppy fringe still lay endearingly across his face. His eyes were still closed in his efforts to ignore her, but instead of seeming cold and bitter, he now appeared relatively content. River smiled slightly, and reckoned she would have kissed him under any other circumstances, just to erase that furrow of concern and over-thinking and perfect that expression. Instead, she continued with her story.
"It's about a girl called Clara, who receives a nutcracker doll for Christmas. When she goes to sleep, she dreams that the nutcracker has come to life, and that he is being hunted by the Mouse King, because he is the rightful king but he gave up his position...because he felt he did not deserve it."
The Tardis whirred a warning, and River was not sure whether it was to her or to the Doctor. The Doctor folded his hands over his chest, and the furrow in his brow deepened. Observing closely for any sign of hostility, River gently pushed on.
"He believed he was unworthy of being adored, or even of being loved. And yet, despite everything - despite being alone, despite nobody knowing who he was, despite everybody thinking he was dead - he still helped his old friends, and he endured all of those who believed his demise was a favour to the universe. He earnt their favour, even though he did not have to, and as she watched him, Clara saw him for who he really was. Not a nutcracker, not a disgraced prince, not a failure at all, no: he was a wonderful, wonderful man. And as she learnt this about him, she learnt surprising things about herself too. In the end, they both blossomed...and the nutcracker realised he did not have to be alone after all."
River smiled at the wonder of it, still watching his adorable face. One of his eyes opened a crack - just like it had at Lake Silencio in the timeline that never was, when she had drained her weapon pack - and she almost laughed. The Doctor gave her an exaggerated scowl in return.
"If I'm supposed to be gleaning some sort of message from this, it didn't work," he declared stubbornly.
River leaned across the bed, rolling onto it as she reached for his face, and ever so gently brushed his fringe out of the way. He closed his eye, then opened it as if to check that she was still there, and closed it again. Slowly, River slid her hand from his face down to his chest, and lifted one of his hands from the other.
"My Doctor," she sighed, kissing it as reverently as he had kissed her wrist, before tucking it between the two of them and drawing circles with her thumb. "Of course it did. You never can resist a Clara."
He huffed. How did this woman keep drawing him in?! "Why? What's so special about her? Or...them, as you seem to have just implied?"
River smiled down at his other hand, which now appeared to be searching for somewhere to rest, lonely without its companion. His fingers twitched like a recovering Auton, as if they were contemplating – dare she think it – finding hers.
"Do you know what Clara found out about herself on their little adventure?" River asked, bringing his captured hand up to the lonely one and cupping them together. Drawing one knee closer to her chest, she lifted herself over their clasped hands, so that her lips hovered inches from his. In a whisper, River answered herself. "That she was kind, clever, and brave. Sound like a familiar check list?"
The Doctor's hands tensed for a moment, tempted to shove her away as he had so many times before with his words. Memories flooded through him – a few bad ones, but mostly painfully good ones. The ones that proved what his companions could do.
What you enable and encourage us to do.
The Doctor's hands fell limp, and his eyes and mouth flew open. River backed off as he flew into an upright position.
"River!" he gasped, scarcely louder than a breath. He put a hand to his forehead, just to check that there was not something else there. He could not feel her in his mind any more...but if he looked for her, there was something on the fringes...
Frantically, with both hands now, he checked all through his hair as though a fault in his internal mental protections might be detectable on the outside.
"But that's-" he blustered. "That's...impossible!"
"I love that word." River grinned, tempted to ruffle his hair – and she would have, if he had not done such a good job of it himself. "In fact, it's my middle name."
"It is not!"
"How do you know?" she put both hands to her chest, pretending to be offended. "I invented this name you know. It can be whatever I want it to be – are you going to argue, husband? River Impossible Song. It has a ring to it, don't you think?"
"You invented that name because I invented that name," the Doctor retorted, "because you told me so I told you, so..."
"Yes, yes. Circles. I know, sweetie. Did you ever believe two time travellers' lives would be linear, even in something as fundamental as names?"
The Doctor shook his head, and a fraction of a chuckle managed to surface. "Melody Pond. Amelia's best friend, named after yourself." He grinned – just for a fleeting moment, but it set River's heart soaring. She slid off the bed and pulled him to his feet, trying to energise him.
"Child of the Tardis," River continued for him. "Sexy's been helping with my telepathy. Well, both my Sexies."
"Both your-?!"
"The other one is you, Sweetie. Goodness, you can get jealous. You're as red as your bow tie!" She waved it at him and laughed. The Doctor's smile faltered, and his eyes grew wide with shock and what almost classified as horror, when he saw the piece of fabric dangling from River's fingers.
"Is it a cry for help?" "What?" "The bow tie!"
"Bow ties. Are. Cool."
"Bow tie. Get rid."
He shut his eyes. His chest slumped and he fell back to the mattress, just as disheartened as River was by this unavoidable overpowering of emotion. Neither of them had really been kidding themselves that his mood swing was going to last: nothing ever did with them. All they could do was grab on and be dragged for as long as they were able. River tried not to feel let down, but she could see the Doctor felt just as affected by his ability to be overcome by his grief as by the grief itself. Pinching the bridge of his nose, the Doctor let out an exasperated sigh.
"I'm sorry, River."
"It's okay. You tried. You're getting better."
The Doctor hummed gloomily and propped his elbows against his knees, staring at the carpet while his thoughts began to drift. River felt a tear sting the corner of her eye. She drew a deep breath, and clung tighter to the bow tie for a moment, before turning and striding out the door as fast as good posture and infallible stoicism would allow.
As soon as the door slid shut, River pressed her shoulder blades against it; not out of desperation or crippling heartbreak, but merely to assist in controlling her emotions before she made a sound, or the Tardis alerted the Doctor to her suffering. They had made real progress today, and the last thing either of them needed was for the Doctor to lose himself in another marathon of guilt and self-loathing. She did not feel bad after all that, really, it was just draining to have to work so hard to get the slightest peep out of him: though she was exhausted right at the moment, River Song was smiling, because things were looking up at last.
When her breaths were steady once more, she stood and made her way back to the control room. She wandered around the console, checking the levers and knobs, and then pulled the scanner down towards herself so that she could watch another Christmas unfold on the planet below.
This one was before Amy and Rory were born. She was not sure exactly when; Victorian England, she would guess, by both the scenery and a fetish that both the Tardis and the Doctor had seemed to have developed. River was not complaining. It was nice down there, and relatively trouble-free, as Earth was too primitive then to warrant much alien attention. It was a vision of Christmas, and if she could not have her usual vision of Christmas (which involved the Doctor, yet more ridiculous hats, and some absolutely atrocious colour combinations), and she could not have her parents – for though she could easily find them, she could not yet face them - perhaps it would do.
Thank you, came a familiar voice, brushing against her consciousness like her hair did against her ear when he whispered through it. But how did you learn to do this? Isn't it dangerous? Why would I have agreed?
Curiosity at last. River let out a victorious sigh and just smiled to herself for a long, silent moment. Then, in the most playful and intriguing mental tone she could muster (and she was getting rather good at that, apparently) she explained in as much detail as she ever could.
Spoilers.
And briefly, she felt the Doctor laugh.