"Oh. Bad perfume."
Bad, Phil? Bad perfume? It's bloody foul! You'd sling it about to keep cats out of the garden! You'd throw it in the eyes of an attacking Krillitane! To clear the moss out from between the garden paving slabs! To ward off unwanted male attention!
"What is it?"
Prada bloody Candy…
"Can I point something out and you won't throw anything at me?"
I think we're a bit beyond all that by now, aren't we, Phil?
"You're wearing it."
…Then again, I do have a minor issue with people who state the obvious.
"Get a divorce then. OI! What happened to 'beyond all that', what even was that?"
It was my thirty-second way to kill you. Paper weight. But I missed.
"You got twenty-eight in the first half hour, what happened?"
I'd spotted most of them. The other four only happened when I realized that was a paperweight and not just an ornament. By the way, Phil, should you ever pass any comment on my marriage again, much like the one you just managed there, I will not miss, is that understood?
"Exactly! My God, you've just sat here for an hour and more, River, and moaned about Christmas. And yet at every possible juncture it's come out that you either had a brilliant time or were more than willing to put up with it for the sake of other factors. You are wearing the perfume, for God's sake! We sat down to find out why you came back here shooting holes in the walls! What's the bloody problem?"
It's a crap gift!
"You're not serious…"
Would you give your wife bad perfume, Phil? Or your girlfriend? If you had one, I mean.
Because he's so good at presents, usually.
Because bad perfume is a gift you give to someone you hardly know.
We didn't do anything of things we usually do at Christmas, and he wasn't as sweet and considerate as usual and there was no sense of tradition or normality because it's not the usual.
"I don't follow."
No, of course you don't.
It's usual for me. I've done it before. Been there, done that, got bored of it and moved through that into an acceptance of a few comfortably routine days a year. Worked through all this to a time of good presents and fun and understanding and Mum learning not to buy more chocolate bars than strictly necessary and Daddy knowing better than to try and tell her how to decorate the house
But they hadn't.
He hadn't.
For him, this was our first Christmas together.
"And… and doesn't that make it all the more special?"
Oh, God, Doctor Frungle, like you can't even know... I'll never forgive myself, taking so long to figure it out. Not until the gift, after he was gone. Too late to do anything about it. And yes, God, it's all burned into my mind, but how long for? What memory will I take it away from it? Why couldn't I just be smarter, quicker? I could have clung to every moment of it if I'd only known it was the first for him.
"I don't understand."
I know. I can go now, though, can't I? You're all caught up, Phillip Frungle. I'm not sure what else we can talk about.
"Are you sure?"
Yes. I think it's best.
"I'll call for a guard to take you back."
The guards fear her when she is placid. More so when she sighs, when her eyes are all but shut, when something sad and real in her turns to exhaustion. She can turn in an eyeblink when she's like this.
But she doesn't. From Frungle's office back to the circle of her cell, Doctor Song neither speaks nor snipes, gives no one any trouble whatever.
Fear does not exactly change to pity, but it shades that way. They've had too much experience with her not to stay wary. Still, each of them, every sentry who takes his place at her side along the way, knows that something here is very wrong. Something has gone out of her today. The fight and struggle that brought her back literally shooting was just the final flare of something dying, the glow when the candle has been extinguished.
Perhaps that, or psychic paper, is how he got them to let him in.
Even got them to help, wrapping tinsel up and down the prison bars.
It is nothing much. A plate of turkey sandwiches and a bottle of champagne just beginning to go slightly flat. Behind, with the wrapper peeled back away from the two little chunks, dessert is a Bounty, still somehow pale with condensation, fridge cold.
He's still wearing that bloody Santa hat, but she doesn't care. He still stinks of trench mud, but the perfume drowns it out.
"The Bounty thing wasn't me," he says, very quickly, defending himself. "It was Jessica, she could smell that perfume from under the tree and she knew you wanted that more, so she…" Trailing off and then, softly, apologetically, "I made a bit of a mess of things, didn't I?"
"No," she tells him. "Not at all."
[For absolutely bloody everybody! Obviously I didn't have enough chapters to thank everyone personally, and I'm really sorry if I've offended anyone, it was never my intention. Special mentions, however, have to go to Jackaddict and Thundercracker, who might not speak but are always about, Nitroglycerin, LadyElectraBlack, Kehwie, Polkadottedangels, anguauberwald, dejavu122, abalafae, Alfie Timewolf, YOU WHOLE PACK OF LEGENDARY LEGENDS, MERRY CHRISTMAS THE LOT OF YOU AND ALL MY SPECIAL CHRISTMAS LOVE!]