Forest of the Dead: A Gasp
"Hey!" Proper Dave's suit called as he staggered closer to the Doctor, "Who turned out the lights?"
"The Vashta Nerada live on all the worlds in this system, but you hunt in forests," the Doctor continued, "What are you doing in a library?"
"We should go," Other Dave muttered, looking around, his gaze turning to the shadows on the ground surrounding Proper Dave, knowing they could strike at any moment, "Doctor!"
"In a minute," he called back, waving off the other man as he faced Proper Dave, "You came to the Library to hunt, why? Just tell me why?"
"We...did...not," Proper Dave began, strained.
"Oh, hello," the Doctor grinned, pleased he could now communicate with the Vashta Nerada. If he could communicate, he could maybe get through to them, negotiate something, get them to leave the others, leave Angel, alone.
"We...did not."
"Take it easy, you'll get the hang of it. Did not what?"
"We...did not...come here."
"Well, of course you did," he frowned, shaking his head, "Of course you came here."
"We come from here," the Vashta Nerada corrected.
"From here?" he stared at the spacesuit a moment, that made...no sense at all.
"We hatched here."
"But you hatch from trees, from spores in trees."
"These are our forests."
"You're nowhere near a forest, look around you," he opened his arms, gesturing around at the shelves that surrounded them.
"These are our forests."
"You're not in a forest, you're in a library. There are no trees in a..." and then it dawned on him, "Library."
"We should go," Other Dave called, "Doctor!"
"Books," the Doctor nodded, getting it now, "You came in the books. Microspores in a million million books."
"We should go. Doctor!"
"Oh, look at that," he turned to look at the bookshelves, ignoring Other Dave for the moment, far more interested in the mystery unfolding before him, NOW it made sense, "The forests of the Vashta Nerada, pulped and printed and bound. A million million books, hatching shadows."
"We should go. Doctor!"
The Doctor glanced back at Other Dave, just realizing that the man had been repeating himself for quite a while now, "Oh Dave! Oh, Dave, I'm so sorry," the lights of Other Dave's relay blinked as the helmet held a skull behind it, both the Daves closing in on him on either side.
"Hey! Who turned out the lights?"
"We should go. Doctor!"
"Thing about me," he started backing up, glancing back and forth between the two Daves as they staggered towards him, jerking, still not quite used to small movements, "I'm stupid, I talk too much, always babbling on, this gob doesn't stop for anything…well, it stops for Angel. Blimey, that woman can kiss…" he started to smile, thinking of her, of her kisses, of how he could never satisfy himself with just kissing her once, needing to kiss her two or three...or many more...times before he could stand to pull himself away from her. He swore on his hearts that her kisses were addictive, they always left him wanting more.
He'd been telling the complete and total truth when he'd been John Smith, the human, he truly could spend the rest of his life (lives) kissing Angel.
He suddenly jumped back, startled out of his rather pleasant thoughts by one of the Daves swiping at him, "But never mind that," he continued, moving back further, "Wanna know the only reason I'm still alive? Besides my Mate?" he grinned, "Always stay near the door!" he pointed the sonic at the floor, opening up a trapdoor and disappearing down it.
The Daves looked down, only to see they were hundreds of floors above ground and the Doctor was gone. They looked up at each other a moment before they turned and walked off.
The Doctor hung under the trapdoor, climbing under the corridor as he clung to metal structures, the sonic in his mouth.
~8~
Charlotte beamed as she saw the Doctor climbing, still alive, just fine, and clicked the remote, checking on Donna.
~8~
"I suggested we meet here because a playground is the easiest place to see it, to see the lie," Evangelista was telling Donna as the two women continued to sit on the bench in the small playground.
"What lie?" Donna frowned.
"The children, look at the children."
Donna pursed her lips at the woman bringing up her children and changed the topic, "Why do you wear that veil? If I had a face like yours, I wouldn't hide it."
"You remember my face, then? The memories are all still there, the Library, the Doctor, the Angel, me. You've just been programmed not to look."
"Sorry, but...you're dead."
She was dead wasn't she? She tried to remember, strained to do it, she remembered a library, a dark room, a skeleton in white...and someone hugging her. A ginger woman hugging her...and felt a tug at her heart. The woman beside her was dead, and the woman who had hugged her was dying...right? But...who was that woman? The Angel? Was it her?
She couldn't remember.
"In a way, we're all dead here, Donna," Evangelista sighed, "We are the dead of the Library."
"Well, what about the children?" Donna tensed, "The children aren't dead. My children aren't dead!"
"Your children were never alive," Evangelista said simply.
"Don't you say that!" Donna shouted, "Don't you dare say that about my children!"
"Look at your children," she gestured to the children, "Look at all of them, really look," they turned to see a group of children playing around the playground, all looking identical to Donna's, all of them, the same little girl and boy, in the same clothes, the exact same girl and boy, "They're not real. Do you see it now? They're all the same. All the children of this world, the same boy and the same girl, over and over again."
"Stop it!" Donna cried, "Just stop it! Why are you doing this? Why are you wearing that veil?" she pulled off the veil to reveal a terribly contorted face, barely recognizable.
Donna and the children screamed in horror.
~8~
Charlotte screamed and hid her face in the pillow beside her, that was not the same pretty woman she'd seen in the Library!
~8~
Lux glanced over at Angel who was sitting on the floor a few feet away, having collapsed there really, taking quite a few deep breaths, trying to get her breath back but seeming to struggle to do so. He frowned as she clutched at her chest with one hand, seeming as though any moment now she might start to choke, holding onto the desk beside her with her other hand, trying not to fall to the floor completely. He actually found himself...wanting...to go check on her, to see if she was ok. She was...pale, and shaking, and sweating a bit, and her eyes were filling with tears and fear as she just couldn't seem to breathe. He was...worried for her, but Professor Song had ordered them all about as soon as they'd reached the room to try and make it somewhat safe...and he valued his safety and his life more than anyone elses.
River glanced at her as well, before getting right back to her work, sonicing the shadows, "You know..." she murmured, "It's funny, I keep wishing the Doctor was here."
"The Doctor is here, isn't he?" Anita turned to her, alarmed, from where she too had been glancing back at Angel, the woman had been so kind to her, listening when she had first spoken about her shadows, not brushing her off, "He's coming back, right?"
"You know when you see a photograph of someone you know, but it's from years before you knew them? It's like they're not quite...finished, they're not done yet. Well...yes, the Doctor's here. He came when I called, just like he always does," she glanced at Angel, frowning a bit when she saw the woman wasn't paying much attention to anything she was saying, before she returned to speaking to Anita, "But not my Doctor. Now my Doctor..." she smiled in memory, "I've seen whole armies turn and run away. And he'd just swagger off back to his TARDIS and open the doors with a snap of his fingers. The Doctor...in the TARDIS...next stop: everywhere."
"Spoilers!" the Doctor called, dashing into the room, "Nobody can open a TARDIS by snapping their fingers. It doesn't work like that."
"It does for the Doctor."
"I am the Doctor," he glared as rushed right past her, not even giving her a second glance, and knelt before Angel as she started gasping.
"Yeah," River huffed, "Someday."
He shook his head and turned back to Angel, who had tears in her eyes as she struggled to breathe, actually seeming scared by how little oxygen she was able to get to her lungs, "Angel…" he whispered, feeling tears in his own eyes to see her struggling so, taking her head in his hands, "Breathe, slowly…" he stroked her cheeks with his thumbs, trying to calm her, "That's it, one deep breath at a time, with me," he inhaled deeply, holding her gaze as she slowly did the same, "I'm here. I'm alright. See?" he smiled at her as she slowly started to get her breath back and felt his hearts restart.
That had been far too close.
He looked back at River, feeling Angel shaking in his arms, "What happened?" he demanded of her, a hard look in his eyes.
He'd trusted the woman with Angel, trusted her to keep her safe and protected, and, yes, she was setting up a safe area, but he doubted, from how she'd reacted and treated Angel so far, that it was for her. It was probably for her crew and Angel was just 'lucky enough' to be in the middle of her crew at the moment. He never should have left his Mate alone with that woman. He didn't trust her at all, despite her seeming to know his name.
He knew that telling anyone his name was a matter of trust, you told your Mate your name as the symbolic first step to Mating, letting them know that you trusted them that much with your mind, with your hearts, with your entire being, starting with trusting them with your name. But River? He shook his head, HER knowing his name did nothing for him in terms of trust, all it really did was make him even more wary and suspicious of her.
And he swore, on all the stars in the sky, if SHE had something to do with Angel's current state...he'd kill her.
Angel reached out and put her hand on his, making him look back at her as she shook her head subtly. Whether to let him know it wasn't River's fault or to silently ask him not to murder the human, he didn't know. But really, both would be just like her too. And that made him smile. Angel would sooner take the blame on herself than let him be angry at someone else, even if said person deserved it. And she wouldn't ever ask him to kill someone, not ever, she'd stop him. She didn't like death, no matter whose, aliens, enemies, humans, all of them...to her, life was SO sacred that the thought of it being extinguished...snuffed out like a light...well that was just so her wasn't it?
He gently stroked her cheek, 'Are you ok?' he asked her, squeezing her hand.
She nodded, 'Better,' she reached out and touched his cheek, stroking it with her thumb as he had done to her only moments ago, 'I always breathe better when you're with me.'
He beamed at that, pleased, he could tell she was doing better now that he was there, breathing easier, but he could still sense a strain in her. When he'd first scanned her with the sonic, outside the UNIT lorry-base, the results...her body was shutting down, failing, starting with her lungs. It seemed like all the running they'd done in such a short time had exacerbated that, strained her poor lungs too much and they had rebelled against her. It was her body's way of telling her she'd done too much, that it...that it couldn't handle running like that much longer, if at all.
And that...was very bad.
"Nothing," River rolled her eyes at him, answering the question he'd forgotten he'd asked when he'd looked into Angel's 'hot-chocolate with golden sprinkles' eyes, "We ran in and she started panting."
"What's wrong with her?" Lux asked, eyeing the woman.
The Doctor swallowed hard, just looking at Angel as she slowly breathed in and out, "She's dying."
"What?!" River gasped as she spun around to face him.
"Yeah," he nodded, pulling out a small handkerchief and wiping a thin layer of sweat off the girl's brow, tucking a lock of hair behind her ears when he saw her lifting a shaking hand to do the same.
"Well what's wrong with that?" River shook her head, starting to frown, not sure why he was getting so worked up, "She can regenerate."
"We're not sure if she will…" the Doctor swallowed, gaining a little more from River, the woman at least knew Angel was a Time Lady. They just...didn't know how, whether she knew Angel in the future...or knew of her, if...if HE'D told her about Angel at one point.
He shook his head quickly at that idea that River was someone close to him and he'd told her, his 'future Mate' (not that she could really be his Mate, she wasn't a Time Lady...and he DIDN'T want another Mate besides Angel), about Angel, his past Mate. But that idea was absurd, Angel was and would be his ONLY Mate.
"What do you mean?" River's eyes widened, actually sounding shocked by that news.
He was silent, he didn't want to answer, he didn't want to even think about the possibility of losing her, "Are you alright?" he asked her, out loud this time as she finally started breathing normally.
She squeezed her eyes shut a moment, rubbing her chest, now that she could process the fact she was breathing again, she could feel just how much her chest hurt, "No…" she admitted, giving a small cough, "But we can't worry about me now…" she opened her eyes, "Other people may have less time than me."
The Doctor frowned, he would always worry about her, no matter what, her first and foremost.
'Anita,' she reminded him quietly, 'Please Theta,' she looked at him, 'Don't let your worry about me keep you from helping HER. Please.'
He smiled softly at that, at her concern for others, kissing her forehead and got up to turn to Anita, not noticing River watching them closely, a small frown on her face, but this time not one of anger or resentment, but of true...shock and even...a bit of concern, "How are you doing?" he asked Anita.
"Where's Other Dave?" River swallowed, looking back up at the Doctor, pulling her gaze away from Angel.
"Not coming, sorry."
"Well, if they've taken him, why haven't they gotten me yet?" Anita couldn't help but ask.
"I don't know," the Doctor admitted, looking down to see Anita with two shadows, "Maybe tinting your visor's making a difference."
"It's making a difference alright. No one's ever going to see my face again."
"Is there anything I can get you Anita?" Angel offered, pushing herself up and walking over to them weakly, the Doctor quickly wrapping an arm around her waist, knowing an attack like that must have taken quite a bit out of her. She looked it too, there was a...weariness in her eyes, a tiredness, that hadn't been there before he'd sent her off with River.
"An old age would be nice. Anything you can do?"
"I'll try my best," Angel nodded, both of them sharing an understanding.
"Doctor..." Anita turned to him a bit, "When we first met you, you didn't trust professor Song, neither of you did. And then she whispered a word in your ear, and you did," she seemed to wince, "Well, YOU did," she turned to Angel a moment before looking back at the Doctor, "My life so far...I could do with a word like that. What did she say?" she sighed when he remained quiet, "Give a dead girl a break. Your secrets are safe with me."
"Safe..." the Doctor frowned.
"What?"
"Safe. You don't say saved, nobody says saved, you say safe. The data fragment!" he spun to River and Lux, pulling a bit of a 'River' and focusing on Lux instead, "What did it say?"
"'4,022 people saved. No survivors,'" Lux repeated.
"Doctor?" River looked at him but he just turned back to Angel, exuberant.
"Nobody says saved!" he grinned at Angel even as she looked at him, confused, "Nutters say saved, you say safe. But you see, it didn't mean safe, it meant...it literally meant...saved!"
She blinked and her eyes widened, working it out, "Oh my God!"
~8~
"What happened to your face?" Donna breathed, staring at Evangelista.
"Transcription errors," she replied, shrugging, sighing, "Destroyed my face, did wonders for my intellect. I'm a very poor copy of myself."
"Where are we? Why are the children all the same?"
"The same pattern over and over. It saves an awful lot of space."
"Space?"
"Cyberspace."
~8~
"No!" Charlotte cried at Evangelista, scared, "Don't tell, you mustn't tell!"
~8~
"See, there it is, right there!" the Doctor shouted from a terminal, "A hundred years ago, massive power surge, all the teleports going at once. Soon as the Vashta Nerada hit their hatching cycle, they attack. Someone hits the alarm, the computer tries to teleport everyone out."
"It tried to teleport 4,022 people?" River gaped.
"Succeeded, pulled 'em all out, but then what? Nowhere to send them, nowhere safe in the whole Library, Vashta Nerada growing in every shadow. 4,022 people all beamed up and nowhere to go. They're stuck in the system, waiting to be sent, like emails. So what's a computer to do? What does a computer always do?"
"It saved them," Angel smiled, reaching out to touch the terminal, stroking it a bit, much like she would the TARDIS, "Oh well done," she whispered to the computer, speaking to it just like she would the TARDIS, as though it could understand her, "You're such a clever girl aren't you?"
The Doctor laughed at that, Angel always had that ability, making him smile and laugh despite the danger, "The Library, a whole world of books, and right at the core, the biggest hard drive in history. The index to everything ever written, backup copies of every single book. The computer saved 4,022 people the only way a computer can. It saved them to the hard drive."
~8~
"Your physical self is stored in the Library as an energy signature," Evangelista explained calmly to Donna, "It can be actualized again whenever you or the Library requires."
"The Library?" Donna frowned, "If my face ends up on one of those statues..."
"You remember the statues?"
"Wait, no," she frowned, scrunching her face a moment as she struggled to remember, "Just...hang on. So...this isn't the real me? This isn't my real body. But I've been dieting!" she huffed, how was THAT fair?!
"What you see around you, this entire world is nothing more than virtual reality."
"So why do you look like that?"
"I had no choice. You teleported. You're a perfect reproduction. I was just a data ghost caught in the Wi-Fi and automatically uploaded."
"And it made you clever?" she guessed, trying to follow along. Evangelista, for being so smart now and having been a bit...dim...before wasn't very good at explaining things in a way she could understand. Not like Angel...
Oh. My. God. Angel! And the Doctor! They were real! They were trapped in the Library at that very moment! She had to help them!
"We're only strings of numbers in here," Evangelista continued, "I think a decimal point may have shifted in my IQ. But my face has been the bigger advantage. I have the two qualities you require to see absolute truth. I am brilliant...and unloved."
"That's NOT what you need to see the absolute truth," Donna frowned at her, Angel...she was just like that, she could look at things and see them for what they were. Not even the psychic paper could fool that girl and she was sure, had Angle been feeling better, she would have been able to pick out the Vespiform right off the bat too. Angel could see the truth, and Angel was the most beautiful, clever, lovable girl in the Universe. And now, she was alone, well, with the Doctor, but alone in the Library with that River Song woman and she needed her sister. And Donna Noble was NOT about to abandon her.
She looked at Evangelista, hoping that there might be some way to get out of that world, "If this is all a dream...whose dream is it?"
"It's hard to see everything in the data core," Evangelista seemed to frown, "Even for me, but there is a word. Just one word. CAL."
~8~
Charlotte watched Donna and Evangelista, in tears, taking the remote and pushing a key.
~8~
"Mummy!" Angela cried, "My knee!"
Donna looked over, feeling an odd feeling rush through her, like she'd first felt when she'd begun to see Lee, like she was forgetting and remembering things. She shook her head and quickly made her way over to her daughter on the ground, "Oh, oh look at that knee! Oh, look at that silly old knee!" she hugged Angela to her.
"She's not real," Evangelista reminded her, sensing what had happened, the program had gotten to the ginger again, made her forget, made her not want to believe what she was hearing, "They're fictions. I'm sorry, but now that you understand that, you won't be able to keep a hold. They are sustained only by your belief."
"You don't know," Donna glared back at her, clutching her children close, "You don't have children!"
"Neither do you," Evangelista countered as Donna took her children's hands and turned to go, "Donna, for your own sake, let them go!"
~8~
"Stop it!" Charlotte yelled at the telly, at Evangelista, "You'll spoil everything! I hate you, you're going to ruin everything! Stop it!"
"Sweetie, what's wrong?" her father asked, walking in from the kitchen, worried for her.
"Shut up!" she shouted, pushing a key on the remote...
And her father disappeared.
Her eyes widened in horror at that as she gasped, "Daddy! No! Daddy!" she threw the remote to the ground, backing away from it, scared, so, so scared...
~8~
An alarm went off in the Library.
"What is it?" Lux turned, trying to see what had set it off, "What's wrong?"
"Autodestruct enabled in 20 minutes," a computer stated.
~8~
Donna and her children walked away from the playground quickly, "Mummy, what did the lady mean?" Angela looked up at her, "Are we not real? Where are we going?"
"Home!" Donna shouted.
~8~
Suddenly Donna was standing in the sitting room of their home, the lights now red, an alarm in the distance.
"That was quick, wasn't it, mummy?" Angela smiled up at her.
"Mummy, what's wrong with the sky?" her son, John, asked, looking out the window, terrified to see a red sky.
~8~
"What's maximum erasure?" River read off the terminal.
"20 minutes, this planet's gonna crack like an egg," the Doctor said grimly, gripping Angel's hand tightly.
"No!" Lux shouted, "No, it's alright, the doctor moon will stop it. It's programmed to protect CAL."
~8~
Charlotte laid, crying on the floor of her sitting room, as Dr. Moon appeared and knelt beside her, reaching out to place a comforting hand on her shoulder, "Now, you really must stop this, you know," he told her gently, "You've forgotten again. It was you who saved all those people, haven't you? And then, you remembered..."
"Shut up, Dr. Moon!" she shouted, grabbing the remote as it lay only inches away from her and pushed a button, disappearing him as well, just like her father.
She gasped and curled up in a little ball, now she really was truly alone...
~8~
The terminal's monitor shut off.
"No, no, no, no, no, no, no!" the Doctor's eyes widened.
"All Library systems are permanently offline," the computer stated, "Sorry for any inconvenience. Shortly..."
"We need to stop this, we've got to save CAL!" Lux shouted.
"Mr. Lux," Angel turned to him, pulling the Doctor's attention away from the monitor and to her, like it always was whenever she spoke, "What is CAL?" he'd said it quite a bit in such a short time and he seemed truly worried about whatever it was.
Lux tensed a moment, hesitating.
"We can help," Angel promised, "The Doctor, he's brilliant," she smiled at him, making him smile back at her softly for the praise, "HE can save CAL, but we need to know what it is."
Lux sighed, "We need to get to the main computer, I'll show you."
"It's at the core of the planet," the Doctor looked around for a way to get there.
"Well, then," River smirked, sonicing a symbol on the floor and opening it up, letting a light blast up at them, "Let's go! Gravity platform!"
They all stepped onto the platform of light and it started to descend.
~8~
Donna sat on the sofa, holding her children tightly, shaking, not wanting to let go of them, not wanting to lose them. They were her children!
"Mummy, you're hurting my hand," John murmured.
"You just...you just stay where I can see you," Donna told them, in tears, "Right, you...you don't get out of my sight."
"Is it bedtime?" Angela asked.
~8~
The children were in bed as Donna sat before them with a book, appearing to have just read them a bedtime story, "Ok. That was lovely, wasn't it?" she smiled at them, forcing herself to remember how she'd taken the children upstairs after a lovely evening and put them to bed, how it HADN'T been only seconds between Angela asking her and them being there, if she remembered it detailed enough...then it was real, "That was a lovely bedtime. We had warm milk, and we watched cartoons, and then mummy read you a lovely bedtime story."
"Mummy, John and me, we're not real, are we?" Angela asked her sadly.
"Of course you're real," she insisted, "You're as real as anything. Why d'you say that?"
"But, mummy," John spoke, "Sometimes, when you're not here, it's like...we're not here."
"Even when you close your eyes, we just stop," Angela added.
"Well, mummy promises to never close her eyes again," she said, about to cross her left...and right side of her chest...before she realized what she was about to do, what she remembered seeing that Doctor and Angel people do as well, and stopped herself.
But when she looked at the beds, the children were gone.
"No!" she screamed, rushing to the beds, trying to find the children, "Please! No, please! No! No, no! NO!"
~8~
"Autodestruct in 15 minutes."
"The data core!" the Doctor muttered, "4,000 living minds, trapped inside it."
"Yeah, well they won't be living much longer, we're running out of time," River agreed, hearing the autodestruct warning over the speakers.
~8~
Charlotte laid on the floor in tears, "Help me. Please help me. Please, please help me!"
~8~
They stepped off the gravity platform and into a control room, the crew and the Doctor about to rush in one direction when Angel stepped in another.
"Angel!" the Doctor called, holding out his hand to her for her to go with them.
"Can you hear her?" Angel breathed, frowning.
"Hear what?" River asked, as they stopped, they really didn't have the time to be doing this.
"The little girl," Angel turned to them, "It's...it sounds like Charlotte."
As they quieted and listened, they gasped, they COULD vaguely hear someone, a little girl, calling out, "Help me. Please, help me."
"What's that?" the Doctor frowned.
"Was that Charlotte?" River looked around, trying to spot the little girl, it really DID sound an awful lot like the girl they'd seen on the monitor.
The Doctor turned and ran to a monitor, to a terminal, trying to see if they could find the girl, but frowned, pushing a few buttons, trying to bring up the programs, "Computer's in sleep mode...I can't wake it up. I'm trying."
~8~
Toys turned on and off as objects few around Charlotte's home making her cry all the more.
She really was truly and deeply scared...the shadows...they were everywhere...
A/N: Did anyone get a tear when Angel couldn't breathe? I know I did :'( It really kills me to write her like that :(
Next chapter though...there will be a line that the Doctor says that finally gives River the wake up call she needs :) I hope the fact that River seemed shocked about Angel's dying brought up more questions. Why is she shocked? Did the Doctor tell her about his 'past Mate' but not what happened to her? Or is there something more going on? Hmm...I guess we'll find out in the next chapter }:)
And I have to say, thank you guys. Yesterday...well, let's just say that I should apparently NEVER hope for time to write when I actually think I might get some. These last three days I was uber-excited because I figured, I have THREE whole days to just...write :) ...and then my mother surprises me with a statistics test she needed me to tutor her in over the weekend and then demanded that I (me, alone, and not my 2 other siblings) help her clean the entire house yesterday :( And when I wanted to comment on it, just a bit, about how I had really been hoping for just a tiny bit of time to myself, I made it to 'How is it that when I finally have three days...'
And she flipped out on me before I could even finish. She basically told me that my writing was a waste, that I had no talent in it, that it's a stupid TV show, and that it was pathetic I got as excited as I do when I see reviews. So you can understand how upset I was when, even after yelling that at me, she still expected me to clean the house and the 6 chapters behind I had been hoping to also catch up on the last 3 days has now turned into 11 chapters behind :( So I was not in the best mood, but your reviews really helped cheer me up :') I am SO glad you all like Angel so much and are ok with the minor changes I've made to River's character and that the chapters were able to stir up so much emotion in you guys. So thanks! I really mean it, it made my day bearable :)
Some notes on reviews...
Lol, I wish I could force my family to watch DW, every time I get close to convincing my mother to watch it she gets all testy about it -sigh- And my siblings are more into reality TV than good TV lol :) JK, I'm sure some reality TV shows are good :)
Oh I LOVED that line :) Lol, I actually put it into my 'Reproduction' story a little early. The Doctor calls my OC the Professor a 'little Dalek' for cheating during a chess game in TBOSJ ;)
It could be that she overheard Angel, true. But with how sacred a secret their names are, they are brought up to be VERY careful about who they say it around or how loud they say it when others are there. And, IF Angel survived, she might sense River lurking close and be careful about saying it. But then again...if she survives but remains ill, she might not notice River there...hmm...we'll have to wait and see :)
It could be that the Doctor told her since he knew she'd die so soon after that, but it really is FAR too sacred a secret to just tell someone even because they're going to die quite quickly after. It's literally SO much a secret that not even your siblings know your real name, only you and your parents, so I can't quite see him telling River just like that, it would go against everything he's been raised to believe, but it's a great theory! :) And that's a good theory on River as well, but nope, I won't say anything just yet. We'll have to wait and see if I continue the story to see who River might be to the Doctor and what that whole thing is about :)
Angel dying might mean a lessening of jealous Doctor, just because he'll be even more careful about trips and about people around her so I don't think he'd let anyone close enough to her to flirt or anything like that :) BUT! I CAN say that there will be an epic Oncoming Storm moment to come where someone threatens the already ill Angel and the Doctor well...he goes to extremes to protect her }:)
River will definitely be getting a wake up call very soon about the love the Doctor holds for Angel, no worries there :)
Oh there's a reason he's held out on going at River for how she's treating Angel, and it'll be revealed in the next chapter :)