A/N: The Pandorica Opens! Hope you enjoy.
See first chapter for additional notes and disclaimers.
Chapter Ten
River had been nursing a headache all day and sat on her bed reading when she heard a guard answer the phone that was ringing. "The Doctor? Do you mean Dr. Song?"
That got her attention. She rushed over the door, gripping the bars. "Give me that. Seriously, just give it to me. I'm entitled to phone calls." Headache or no, if the Doctor was calling she would be ready.
The guard handed her the phone, and River spoke into it. "Doctor?"
It wasn't the Doctor though. "No, and neither are you," the voice of Winston Churchill huffed over the line. "Where is he?"
River sighed. "You're phoning the time vortex, it doesn't always work. But the TARDIS is smart, she's re-routed the call. Talk quickly. This connection will last less than a minute." She listened while the Prime Minister explained all about the mysterious Van Gogh painting with its message for the Doctor. She knew what she had to do. She ended the call and reached into her shirt for her lipstick.
"Are you finished with that?" the guard asked.
She turned and walked toward him, handing him the phone. "You're new here, aren't you?"
"First day," he confirmed.
The poor man. "Then I'm very sorry." She pulled him to her and kissed him.
She'd only have a few minutes. She scrawled a quick message on the wall and grabbed his keys. Once the door was unlocked, she pushed him inside and took off running down the hall. On her way out of the facility, she triggered the alarm herself to add credence to the guard's hallucination.
Then she grabbed a transport and was on her way.
She made it to the Royal Collection. She crept through the gallery, searching out the painting Churchill had described. She finally found it and headed back the way she came. Suddenly the lights came on, and she found herself staring at a gun. "This is the Royal Collection and I'm the bloody Queen. What are you doing here?"
River didn't have time for delays, but she knew enough about Liz 10 to know she would have to give a satisfactory explanation. "It's about the Doctor, Ma'am. You met him once, didn't you? I know he came here." She had the queen's attention now and pressed her point. "He's in trouble. I need to find him."
Liz lowered the gun but asked, "Then why are you stealing a painting?"
"Look at it," River insisted. "I need to find the Doctor, and I need to show him this."
Liz let her go.
Okay. Step one accomplished. Time to move on to step two-she needed a vortex manipulator if she was going to track down the Doctor.
Well, she knew where to find that. She just needed a few supplies first.
Once she'd gathered what she needed, she set up the meet with Dorium. "Now, word on the belt is, you're looking for time travel," he said.
"Are you selling?" She knew he would be by the time she was done with him.
He brought out a box, but warned her, "Not cheap, Dr. Song. Have you brought me a pretty toy?"
A cue if she'd ever heard one. She showed him her earring. "This is a Calisto Pulse. It can disarm micro-explosives from up to 20 feet."
"What kind of micro-explosives?" Dorium sipped his drink. He was interested.
But not as interested as he was going to be. "The kind I just put in your wine," River said sweetly.
###
Now the owner of a shiny new vortex manipulator, River set about leaving a message for the Doctor. She needed to give him the coordinates she'd found on the painting. Where could she put it where he wouldn't be able to resist?
She thought back to her archaeology classes at Luna. Planet One was the oldest planet in the universe. Legend said there was writing on the side of the diamond cliff-writing from the dawn of time that no one had ever translated.
That practically screamed "Doctor bait," did it not? And how flattering to know that she had written the universe's earliest known writing. She zapped herself back in time to etch "Hello, sweetie" and the coordinates in the side of the cliff.
Then she took herself to the coordinates the painting gave. Time to set up shop.
So she convinced the troops she encountered that she was Cleopatra (dress-up was so much fun!). She had a funny feeling that they ought to have been harder to persuade.
Something was wrong here. Everything felt...off. Like time was wrong somehow. Not in the same way it had been back at Area 52-time wasn't disintegrating. No, this felt more like she was somehow experiencing a timeline that no longer existed.
How was she doing that?
She vaguely remembered...someone mentioning the universe blowing up. Was that what was going to happen? What had already happened from the perspective of the Doctor and her parents?
Her parents? The confusion deepened. She didn't have parents. She had Amy, her mother, but no father. She'd never had a father.
How was it possible that she'd never had a father?
Of course, Amy didn't have any parents at all, so it couldn't be too unusual.
She'd have to figure it out later. The TARDIS had arrived. She sent a centurion off to greet. "Caesar."
The Doctor entered the tent. "Hello, sweetie."
"River! Hi," Amy said happily.
River didn't get a chance to return the greeting, because the Doctor was fussing at her for graffiting the oldest cliff face in the universe. As if she'd had a choice. "You wouldn't answer your phone." She showed them the painting and explained how the coordinates included led them all here. And then she told them the title, "The Pandorica Opens."
The Doctor grumbled then started consulting maps. Finally they determined that if the Pandorica held the most feared thing in the galaxy, whoever built it would want to remember where they'd put it. They all headed toward Stonehenge.
Amy couldn't quite grasp the situation. She asked why Stonehenge wasn't new, and River explained it was already old. Then Amy said, "Okay, this Pandorica thing. Last time we saw you, you warned us about it, after we climbed out of the Byzantium."
River put a finger to her lips. "Spoilers!"
"No, but you told the Doctor you'd see him again when the Pandorica opens," Amy insisted.
"Maybe I did. But I haven't yet. But I will have." She'd have to do so now, whether she'd meant to at the time or not.
They headed down to below-the underhenge, the Doctor called it.
They found the massive box. "It's the Pandorica," the Doctor breathed.
"More than just a fairy tale," River said.
"There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior. A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world," the Doctor said.
Amy asked how this frightening being could be trapped in a box. The Doctor shrugged. "You know fairy tales. A good wizard tricked it."
"I hate good wizards in fairy tales. They always turn out to be him," River grumbled as she took out her scanner and got to work.
Amy asked if the name Pandorica was a callback to Pandora's Box. The Doctor noted that there were too many coincidences, and they all centered on Amy.
They could worry about that later, River thought. She asked the Doctor if he could open the box.
"Easily. Anyone can break into a prison, but I'd rather know what I'm going to find first," he replied.
River looked at her scanner. "It's already opening. There are layers and layers of security protocols in there, and they're being disabled, one by one. Like it's being unlocked from the inside."
"What kind of security?" the Doctor asked.
"Everything. Deadlocks, time-stops, matter-lines..."
The Doctor wondered what could possibly need all that. River was more concerned with what could possibly escape all that.
The Doctor finally figured out that the stones themselves were transmitters, broadcasting a warning to everywhere and everywhen. But the poor idiot didn't get the ramifications of that. River had to try several times to get through to him. She grew more forceful with each attempt. Finally she spelled it out for him. "Doctor, you said everyone could hear it. So who else is coming?"
"Oh." He understood now.
So they worked together to reverse the signal. "Okay, should be feeding back to you now," the Doctor said. "River, what's out there? Getting anything?"
River felt sick. "Around this planet, there are at least 10,000 starships"
"At least?" Amy repeated.
The news only got worse from there. Dalek ships. Cyber ships. The Doctor was plotting to turn them on each other but River cut him off, reading off the list of who else had shown up. "Sontaran. Four battle-fleets. Terileptil. Slitheen. Chelonian. Nestene. Drahvin. Sycorax. Haemo-goth. Zygon. Atraxi. Draconian. They're all here. For the Pandorica."
The Doctor stared at the box. "What are you?"
River didn't care anymore. "Doctor, listen to me! Everything that ever hated you is coming here tonight. You can't win this. You can't even fight it. Doctor, this once, just this one time, please, you have to run."
"Run where?" the Doctor retorted.
"Fight how?" River shot back.
But the Doctor decided to use the Roman soldiers who were conveniently hanging around.
River set to work convincing them. It was an uphill battle at first-the commander who'd just returned was less than thrilled with her Cleopatra impersonation. He was even less pleased when she was flippant. "The sky is falling, and you make jokes. Who are you?"
She didn't have time for this. "When you fight Barbarians, what must they think of you? Where do they think you come from?"
The commander drew his sword. "A place more deadly and more powerful and more impatient than their tiny minds can imagine."
River pulled her own weapon and disintegrated a cabinet. "Where do I come from? Your world has visitors. You're all Barbarians now." She had their attention, so she made her final plea. "You've been a soldier too long to believe there are gods watching over us. There is, however, a man. And tonight he's going to need your help."
###
The Doctor had asked River to bring him the TARDIS. She set the coordinates, but the ship gave a massive jolt as it dematerialized. "What's the matter with you?" River exclaimed. There was another lurch as it landed. "Are you okay now?"
But the monitor was glitchy as well, so she smacked it as she headed toward the door.
Amy's house. "Why have you brought me here?" She noticed the marks left in the grass and the door off the hinges. "Okay, so something's been here." She crept inside.
She headed up to Amy's room, just as she'd done a thousand times before. But this was different. This was wrong. It felt like she was seeing it all for the first time, and that couldn't be right. She'd grown up with Amy. With Amy and...someone. Nothing about this should feel the least bit unfamiliar.
She saw the "Raggedy Doctor" dolls, all neatly lined up. Hadn't she seen these before? Hadn't she played with them as a kid? Why did they stand out now, speaking of a lonely girl growing up abandoned and alone? "Oh, Doctor, why do I let you out?" River murmured.
And then she realized that everything was much worse than she'd thought. Those coincidences the Doctor had noted around Amy reached far further than they'd realized.
She had to warn him. She picked up her communicator. "They're not real, they can't be. They're all right here in the storybook...those actual Romans, the ones I sent you, the ones you're with right now. They're all in a book in Amy's house, a children's picture book."
So the Doctor explained about psychic residue and how the aliens might have used it. "Structures can hold memories, that's why houses have ghosts. They could've taken a snapshot of Amy's memories. But why?"
"Doctor, who are those Romans?" River asked.
"Projections. Or duplicates."
This made no sense. "But they were helping us. My lipstick even worked."
And the Doctor thought that the duplicates might actually think they were real. Fabulous.
And then she found it. The photo of Amy and...someone. Amy was in her policewoman outfit, and he was dressed as a Roman soldier. The Last Centurion flickered through River's brain.
But what did that mean?
Still, it all had to be a trap, a scenario constructed that the Doctor would believe. River headed back to the TARDIS. And once he knew the date she'd landed, the Doctor instructed her to get away, anywhere else, any other time. It didn't really matter-just go.
And she would have done, if only she could. But she couldn't get the TARDIS to cooperate. "I can't break free!" she shouted into the communicator.
"Well, then, shut down the TARDIS. Shut down everything!" the Doctor yelled back.
"I can't!"
And a voice echoed through the TARDIS interior. "Silence will fall."
The Doctor spoke again through the communicator, sounding panicked. "Listen to me, just land her anywhere. Emergency landing, now. There are cracks in time, I've seen them everywhere, and they're getting wider. The TARDIS exploding is what causes them, but we can stop the cracks ever happening if you just land her!"
Well, that was easy enough. Save the universe just by landing the TARDIS. River did so. "Doctor, I'm down. I've landed."
"Okay, just walk out of the doors. If there's no-one inside, the TARDIS engines shut down."
Again, easy enough. Or at least it should've been.
But first she couldn't get the doors to open at all. And then she opened them to be greeted by a stone wall.
She looked back to see the console exploding. She hadn't stopped anything. "I'm sorry, my love."
And then it all repeated. And repeated again. And again. And again...