Author's Note: Thank you again for the lovely reviews! Now, I know y'all are anxious for a bit of action, and I promise it's coming soon! I'm glad you're still enjoying the story as much as I am. :D I've been lucky enough to see all of series 3 thus far, despite living on the wrong side of the pond, and I must say--the Doctor just grows cooler all the time. It's such a joy to see brilliant writing in a TV show when most of it is just more of the same.

This is one of my favorite chapters. Enjoy!



"A thousand years, a thousand more,
A thousand times a million doors to eternit
I may have lived a thousand lives, a thousand times
An endless turning stairway climbs
To a tower of soulIf it takes another thousand years, a thousand wars,
The towers rise to numberless floors in space
I could shed another million tears, a million breaths,
A million names but only one truth to face"
–Sting, "A Thousand Years"

It was two weeks to Paquin, taking a route that would keep Serenity more or less unobtrusive in official eyes and give the crew plenty of time to plan their heist. One stop was planned, on a small border moon to pick up remaining supplies and refuel. Mal ran an efficient ship, with the end result that there was a fair amount of downtime between normal duties.

The Doctor, trying his best to be unobtrusive (for the moment, at any rate), spent the first couple of days staying out of Mal's way. This involved a lot of time in his "quarters"–which, for a man used to the breathing room of the TARDIS, drove him fair starkers. It was when he started using his sonic screwdriver to do light shows on the walls midway through the third day that he decided he'd rather get decked in the face again than spend another minute in the tiny cabin.

Time was an elusive thing on a ship like Serenity. Planet-bound creatures measured their days with things like sunrise and sunset, and marked out their calendars with holidays and such. On board a ship, everything sort of blurred together into another sort of time, a much more fluid kind that could be bent to almost any shape. So, although the clocks said it was midday when the Doctor emerged from his cabin, the ship immediately around him was very quiet and bustle-free.

He padded through Serenity's corridors, headed for the galley, wondering if he could convince someone to let him do something, anything around the ship before he went mad with boredom. Or loneliness.

Laughter and voices from the galley cheered him a bit, and he quickened his pace. The galley was quite his favorite place aboard Serenity, with its cheery yellow walls and painted vines, the big wooden table and mismatched chairs radiating a sense of home and family. It was very domestic, but he liked it nonetheless.

Most of the crew were seated in those chairs now, with cards and bits of paper strewn on the table's surface. Kaylee was perched in Simon's lap, her arm slung around his neck. Zoe, sitting next to them, leaned back in her chair with both hands on the curve of her stomach, smiling slightly as she watched Mal and Jayne laugh over something. Inara was there, as well, chuckling quietly, though there was still a bit of coolness in her gaze when it met Mal's. The only person missing was River.

The Doctor became aware of the unusual sensation of being an intruder. It was not a feeling he was accustomed to; whether or not he actually was intruding, he usually barged in without a care in the world and simply made himself at home. Or in charge, at the very least. But here, confronted with this unusual family, he felt...very alone. An outsider. These people had been through something tremendous together. He didn't know what it was, but he could see it like threads of shadow and light between them. Something that had forged bonds that were all but unbreakable.

He was familiar with bonds like that. And their breaking.

They hadn't seen him, there in the shadows of the doorway. He drew away, suddenly feeling every minute of his nine-hundred-odd years. Some days, he thought he'd give his soul for a little bit of normal...

"They're lucky," said a soft voice.

It was an effort not to jump right out of his skin, but the Doctor managed it with a modicum of grace, before looking down to see River, tucked up in a little shadowy alcove several yards from the galley door. She sat with her knees drawn up to her chest, skin pale and ghostly in the dimness. The dark folds of her loose dress pooled around her, indistinguishable from her long hair.

The Doctor moved closer to her, then crouched down so he was more on level with the strange girl. "Hello," he said quietly. "What are you doing out here?"

"People don't know normal when they see it," she said, completely ignoring his question. "They never see how precious it is."

Okay, that was a bit weird. More than a bit weird, actually, since he'd just been thinking about normality and its absence in his life. But considering the source...well, it wasn't unreasonable that she might be having the same sorts of feelings. It was a more comforting theory than the alternative, anyway, which was that she was slipping past his defenses and picking up his thoughts without half trying. But that...was neither here nor there. He could see some of the pain he was feeling reflected in this child's eyes. "No, they don't, do they?" he replied. "But then, people can be awfully thick."

Her gaze locked onto his. "Normal is relative," she said seriously. "Dinosaurs and monsters and Armageddon can be normal."

One side of his mouth quirked upwards. "Never going to be a dull conversation with you around, is there?"

A feeble answering smile lit her face, lending her delicate, worn features a fleeting luminosity. "You see."

"Oh, I see everything," he said, with a little irony. He did–or rather, he could. All those possibilities, everything that was or had been or could be...Didn't like to, though, unless it was important. It could get awfully distracting–and it made carrying on a proper conversation absolutely beastly.

"But only when you choose to," said River.

He frowned. Again with the disturbingly insightful remarks. "You could say that," he said warily. "Why aren't you in there with them, River?"

"It's hard to remember, sometimes," she said sadly. "To be a girl. They thought Miranda might make me better. She didn't. She just made it so I can pretend sometimes."

"Who's Miranda?"

"You can see her, if you look." River's eyes were intent.

The Doctor snorted softly. "You could give the Face of Boe a run for enigmatic, my girl," he said. "But I won't be distracted by beautifully weird prose. Why is it hard to remember to be a girl?"

There was, of course, an easy answer, an easy out. He could reach out, touch that pale little face, and see for himself what went on in that strange mind of hers. But he didn't make a habit of it, as a rule. Minds were precious things, formed by the soul and the heart and all the experience of a living being. Once you'd seen into another's soul, you never forgot it, not if you lived for a million million years. He'd seen souls enough, some so beautiful as to make him weep, others enough to give him nightmares–but each and every one of them magnificently intense. It was intoxicating, looking into the mind and memories of another. Addicting, even. He'd seen those of his race who had given into the temptation to walk in the minds of others until they became hopelessly lost–or worse, driven mad, utterly dangerous in their power over the souls of others. He swore he'd never do that, never give in to that temptation. And besides, where was the fun in jumping in and getting the answer the easy way? No challenge there...and challenge was what made life worth living.

"You're alone," she said. Ignoring his question, again.

"Yes," he said simply, not caring if she heard the pain in it. "And you're avoiding the question."

The glitter in her dark eyes told him she was perfectly aware of it. Not so mad, then. Or else she had some control of it, enough to keep her sense of humour. "I don't fit in," she said baldly. "I'm part of the family, but sometimes..." She sighed, and straightened out her legs. The Doctor shuffled aside to make room, then sat down beside her before his own legs fell asleep. "I remind them of what they lost, what they sacrificed to Miranda, to save me. I say things that make them worried or confused, and they don't like it. They don't want me to know how they feel when it happens, but I can see it."

The Doctor leaned back against a pipe, tilting his head so he could see down into her face. "I know a bit how that feels," he admitted. "Lots of people don't like what I have to say, most of the time. It's scary. It makes them see beyond their little walls of normality. No one likes being forced to see the monsters." He rolled his head back to look up at the ceiling overhead, full of pipes and wires and loving repair. "But the monsters don't go away just because no one likes them. So I tell them anyway, and damn the consequences."

"Someone has to fight the monsters."

He shot her a brilliant grin. "Exactly. And it can't always be me." He studied her for a long moment, letting senses no human possessed really see River. He'd never seen anyone so tangled, so...shattered. Something terrible had happened to this child, something he quailed at the thought of truly perceiving. But between the cracks shone something so bright it hurt to look at. "Or you, I think," he added softly. "Sometimes, we need other people to fight the monsters with us."

"Or for us," River agreed. Her wide, solemn eyes searched his face in turn. "But sometimes there's no one else. Does it always hurt?"

Though he wasn't quite certain where this strange and twisty conversation was going (didn't want to know, really, more fun that way), he answered honestly. "Yes. But if we turn away from the darkness it will consume us in the end. It has to be faced. Fought. Laughed at. Pierced with whatever light we can muster." He remembered that awful Darkness he'd faced, far beneath the surface of an impossible planet. That evil had been so real–and it had shaken the foundations of everything he ever thought he knew. But he'd faced it, and so had Rose, and all those other silly little humans on that station who'd come to that terrible place simply because it was there. Faced the Beast, and thrown it howling back into the night. "Someone has to stand up and say no."

Silence stretched–not taut, but heavy with something. After a bit, small cold fingers slid over his. With a smile, the Doctor turned his hand palm-upwards and grasped River's hand tightly. "Come on," he said, rising and pulling her up with him. "Let's not sit out here in the cold, eh? We might be outcasts, but by God, we shouldn't have to be outsiders as well."

That luminous smile returned, lending, just for a moment, a breathtaking beauty to her face. For the Doctor, smiles such as that were worth all the pain in the universe.