A translation of "Старая земная шутка" by anytina.
You are always here to me.
And I always listen.
And I can always see you.
River sits on top of the control console, dangling her legs carelessly and shifting random levers now and again, some of them repeatedly. The TARDIS engines are humming softly. The Doctor is in the lower section, tinkering with his ship.
"What's wrong with these gravity compensators?"
"I've warned you, sweetie. You shouldn't plug them into the Relative Dimensional Stabiliser slot."
"The last landing's been way softer..."
"You see, darling, whenever you trip on a cable and rip it out, you've gotta find its actual slot and not shove it into 'this socket here' because 'it sort of fits'. The TARDIS is quite forgiving, she gets you and picks up after you, but that was way too irresponsible even by your standards."
Something shorts out beneath the glass floor, closely followed by a bang. Smoke and ozone fill the control room – for the umpteenth time in the last hour. There is some muttering along the lines of, "Won't try that again," interspersed with coughs and an occasional, "Ouch!". River flicks on the fans with a practised movement.
"A beautiful idiot indeed. You couldn't have described him more aptly," she smiles, caressing the edge of the console.
"Oh, much better now! We should make it a standard procedure for all emergencies. I could install some smoke detectors, what do you think?"
"Much easier to switch on the fans full-power every time you feel like puttering with the tech. I can see from here that that cable's a goner. How did you manage to burn fibre optic? A beautiful idiot... Only you would try to connect two cables of different designs and different colours. Let alone with different labels. Innovator, my arse..."
The peeved TARDIS beeps and dings in agreement.
"Oh, don't be cross! I'm not going to blow up anything again. Wasn't going to in the first place, actually."
"There goes one of the cables for the chameleon circuit," River says, following the said cable with her eyes as it sails through the air to the rejects pile. "But we're not mentioning that, right? We like the TARDIS as she is. No wonder the circuit's been acting up."
"Yeah... All systems look fine now."
"So you're not bothered by a couple of rooms morphing together a little bit every time you land, I suppose? But then, why do you need them? You're never even in there. Take the golf course, for instance. Why do you need a golf course? When did you play last?"
The Doctor skips up the stairs and onto the main level, spins on his heel and sketches a bow.
"So should we fly off to some place nice now or wait till Clara wakes up?"
The TARDIS gives a low hum.
River rolls her eyes. "You're never gonna stop running, eh?"
"You're so right – "
"And this is why I love you", she says dreamily, looking at the ceiling. "My Mister Can't-Sit-Still."
" – it would be really unfair to sideline Clara!" The Doctor rounds the control console, stopping mere inches away from his wife. "So we'll simply make the time run faster in her room, a-a-and... enough! Her alarm will ring in a few minutes. Brilliant!"
"Sometimes I think you can hear me."
River's gaze shifts from the ceiling to the Doctor. She slowly reaches to caress his hair but stops just before touching it. He's studying the readouts, double-checking the date and the destination. He always wants to show only the best there is. River exhales shakily and lowers her hand. She slips off the control console, goes for the doors but vacillates with her back to the Doctor.
"Do you know that old joke from your precious Earth? 'Doctor, everyone ignores me!' I think I'm getting it now. It's hilarious."
She laughs.
The Doctor flinches and his knuckles go white around the view screen.
But River doesn't see that. She disappears before Clara wakes up.