The (twelfth) Doctor's second encounter with his wife tells him that she is far from lost. Those who were enjoying young River, never fear! Later chapters will feature the Doctor encountering his wife early in her timestream. Timey wimey!
I'd like to take this opportunity to say how incredibly grateful I am to all ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR of you lot now for reading this; your support makes it all so enjoyable and you're just a wonderful bunch. THANK YOU.
I hope you enjoy this.
"Sorry. I'm having dinner with Danny."
"You're what?" the Doctor yelled down the phone, deciding to ignore that he could hear his friend roll her eyes. "You're giving up what could be an amazing, life-changing adventure to have chips with your boyfriend? Clara, what happened to you? Did you lose your sanity somewhere? I've heard that does happen in relationships-"
"Doctor." He heard her sigh, and an inaudible mutter in the background.
"Is that Danny? Look…" He took a deep breath, wincing at his own words. "Bring him along, if you really must. I suppose I can accommodate him, though to be honest he's only going to get in the way-"
"We're having dinner, Doctor," she said slowly, as if he didn't speak her language.
He spluttered on, slightly insulted and very exasperated. Humans. Didn't they have any sense of priority? The Universe was waiting at her fingertips! "Well- you could have dinner out here! There's a lovely little restaurant in the Shadoya Galaxy with a glass floor, and the view is-"
"We're fine with Earth, thanks."
His shoulders sagged. "What am I supposed to do with my evening?"
"You're inventive. I'm sure you'll find something. Ok? See you when I see you. Got to go."
The line went dead. Grumbling mild curses at it, he placed it back on the hook and ambled around the controls without purpose, failing to notice in his sulky state that the rotor had ground to a halt.
Possible solitary trips ambled through his head with all the enthusiasm of Clara when he brought her to analyse types of rock. Of the entire Cosmos, he could think of nowhere that bore enough value to visit without having the privilege of seeing it new through someone else's eyes. The Universe was an exceedingly dark place without someone to share it with.
The numbing peace was shattered before he could process it. The Doctor wheeled around at the sound of the doors bursting open in dramatic fashion, bristling with instinctive defence and resenting whatever had brought about the sudden interlude in what had been a perfectly good sulk. "What in the name of sanity…" he hissed under his breath, scowling at the silhouette shining through the smoke that cloaked it.
It turned out, as a matter of fact, to be nothing within the bounds of sanity at all. The irritated mutter was all that could pass his throat before his eyes drank in the swish of hips, the thunder of heels and the impossible bounce of hair, and it tightened with pleasurable discomfort as if swallowing barbed wire and honey. In strolled his wife, clicking her fingers to snap the doors shut behind her as she talked.
"What a day!" The words turned his bones into fizzing livewires. The Doctor watched her as if trapped in a web as River spun around him. "Gosh, those Halitosis Mushrooms certainly know how to talk! But they do make a good stew. Don't worry - extractor fans on! - don't worry, I brushed my teeth. The weather was divine on Hondran; managed to get myself a nice tan. Came across a few Untra; I was curious as to what they did with all those extra arms… needless to say that question didn't go down well. Long story short, those engravings in the hills- fascinating- gave me some juicy material for my next dissertation. Fingers crossed; if this one's good enough, perhaps I'll be an inch closer to earning my pardon. At the very least I'll shave off a couple of my life sentences- only eleven hundred and forty seven to go!"
She finished her soliloquy with a radiant smile that hit his skin like the warmth of the sun, more vibrant, more real than he had ever remembered her to be.
"River," he breathed, fixated on her as she skipped around the rotor merrily and flicked at levers with effortless grace.
It had been a while since she had last turned up, fresh from Berlin; roughly eight months, going by Clara's ageing. It had certainly been long enough for him to quietly accept that perhaps the encounter had been a one-off.
"Sweetie," she chirped back, mistaking his utterance of awe for a greeting. "Ok! What's the plan, then? Business, pleasure, danger, fun? Although it's all one and the same with us, isn't it?"
She threw her head up to grin at him, making her springy curls bob about her shoulders.
He shook his head confusedly, wringing his hands because it was all he could do when a little bit lost in an enthralled stupor. "Plan?"
"Yes, plan." She swivelled the monitor around to examine it, smiling to herself as the Tardis hummed under her touch. "Was it ambitious of me to assume that you had one? Is this going to be another spontaneous date that ends in near death? Not that I mind."
It had been a long while since someone had been able to rival his volume of speech; River had been one of the only people capable of such a thing. In spite of the fact that she was talking faster than he'd remembered her ever doing- rambling, even- with an effervescent bounce in her voice that he swore he hadn't noticed in all the years before. It threw him off enough for her to notice.
"You look a little startled, dear," she mused. Her heels tapped out a rhythm on the floor as she closed the distance between them without any sort of warning- which he really felt he could have done with- to inspect him. "Wait a second. Are you new?"
"Relatively," he answered vaguely, not wanting to see that disappointment on her face that he always saw set in- despite her attempts to conceal it- whenever he wasn't as far along in their lives as she wanted him to be. It may have been a very long time since having the privilege of encountering this River, his River, but he had never for an instant forgotten that expression.
"Ah," she whispered pensively, clearly deducing something he was unaware of. "So is this the first time you've seen me through these eyes?" she asked him, tracing the crinkled skin under his eyes with a light finger.
They were so close now that he could see each particle of light playing with the flashes of colour in her eyes, the eyes that at this beautiful point in her timeline shone with so much life and love; love for him. He'd forgotten how that felt. "Second."
"Oh." He thought he saw her relax at that, before curiosity overcame her. Her eyes narrowed into that playful interrogation mode she was so skilled at. "When was the first? Or am I still to expect that privilege?"
He loved River for not giving away how much the mere thought pained her. "Afraid not. That was when you found me after Berlin."
He watched her eyes flicker as she rewound the memory in her head and surprise seeped into her features. "Really? Well. You did a good job of hiding that."
"I always do."
His wife- his wife, the word was exhilaratingly strange when freshly rewoven into the fabric of his mind- hummed, giving him that flicker of a smile again as if knowing what it did to him and relishing in it. "Berlin was the first time I saw this you, too…" she realised. "Funny. It doesn't usually happen like that." A beautiful full grin broke across her face. "We shared a first, sweetie; I'd say that gives us reason to celebrate, wouldn't you?"
"What do you have in mind?"
He watched her eyes trail across him before they snapped back up, gleaming devilishly. "Dancing!"
He scoffed dramatically, shaking her head as if he could actually ever hope to persuade her out of one of her magnificently bizarre date ideas. "No, no, no. No. I don't dance."
"No," she retorted, lacing her warm fingers through his and pulling him to the controls. He relented limply, still at odds with this body as to how to react with such close contact. Merely being in the same room as the very woman with whom he had shared many nights was enough to make him feel his pulses in his fingertips. "The old you didn't dance. Well, you were all elbows and knees back then, weren't you? The amount of times I had to apologise on behalf of your flailing limbs," she smirked. "But now, Doctor… you've got quite the moves." She chuckled, pressing a kiss to his cheek and wiping the wary look from his face in the process. "Trust me?"
"Do I have a choice?" he asked, deadpan voice concealing his fluttering hearts. He concentrated on keeping his hands stuck to his sides as if it was something his lives depended upon, adamant that this body did not, did not, engage in… canoodling, of any kind. Even if his wife was easily close enough for his hands to reach around her hips, and yes, even if she was smiling at him like he was the centre of the Cosmos, and it did not make any difference whatsoever that her dress was the same shade as her painted lips or that her hair could have pulled meteorites out of orbit and was just asking to have a pair of hands run through it. No. Difference. At. All.
"Of course not."
He blinked, wondering how she could possibly be responding to the self-convincing going on in his head before realising with admitted relief that she was answering his original question. Apparently, the very brief period in which their roles had been reversed was most certainly over; not that he minded. That being said his vision bore a surreal haze at the edges with the sensation of floating through a dream. He was slightly afraid to take his eyes off her, genuinely believing that there was a good chance that perhaps he'd inhaled a speck of psychic pollen and it was only a matter of time until he would wake up, alone. It wouldn't have been the first time.
He hadn't exactly missed her for that reason, because in some form or another she'd been there. Not to anyone else, or anyone possessing a scrap of sanity, at least. He was rather certain that Clara had started to worry, what with the amount of times she had wandered in to discover him having an intense conversation with thin air.
It had been easier that way, in all candour. It was always far more simple to converse with a figment of the imagination than the living, breathing, shining being currently gracing around the console at effortless speed.
"How's Clara?" He must have rolled his eyes at that, because River looked up and gave him a reprimanding tut. "Oh dear; have you two fallen out again? What did you do this time?"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! I'll have you know I didn't do anything, thank you very much!"
"Hmm; when have I heard that before?" He was about to retaliate when her chuckle threw him off. Had he even heard her laugh like that before?
It wasn't the usual controlled, sultry laugh that he couldn't have possibly forgotten for what it had done to him. It seemed far less measured; as a matter of fact, everything about her did.
She nudged him out of the way with her hip to fiddle with the controls. "Be nice to her, sweetie. She's very good. And I doubt anyone else would put up with you."
River's comment was ignored in favour of more important things at hand. There was something different in her that he couldn't quite place; she was still unquestionably the woman he'd fallen for, with the playfully withering comments, the heels and the hair and the everything- especially the everything. But there was something new. Something that wasn't part of the smokescreen; something wonderful.
"Oh, honey, I do believe you've got that face on again!"
His eyebrows sprang up his forehead at her cry. She was watching him intently, looking far too amused. "I'm sorry, what face?"
"The, 'Dear God, My Wife is Fabulous,' face."
"This is my normal face," he told her with exasperated confusion, before the memory came pinging back to him as the words left her lips.
"It certainly is."
He was compelled to smile; rare, in this body. Damned woman, breaking all his new rules. Making him smile and everything.
"When are you?" he decided to ask, as a means of making it seem as if his staring at her for what was frankly an embarrassing length of time was actually heading somewhere.
Her eyes flickered away from his as she considered the question, allowing him to breathe again. "I've just done- well, spoilers. Let's see…"
He restrained himself from physically leaping into the air at hearing the word that indicated times yet to come, as she pulled that gorgeous little blue book from her pocket and flicked through it with the deftness of an expert.
"Oh, yes! Crash of the Byzantium wasn't long ago for me. I know you've done that."
Still relatively young, then; old enough to know him inside out, of course, but not yet a Professor. Old relief washed over him, though it was now irrational; the night of the Singing Towers he'd for so long dreaded was now a distant memory. And here she was.
He remembered telling her father about miracles, once. If only their Ponds could see them now.
The Doctor's hands joined River's at the controls, firing life into the rotor. "Well then, Doctor Song. Let's dance."
