A Good Man (and Mad Woman) Go to War
River Song paused in where she had been lightly waltzing down the hall of Stormcage, heading back to her cell, when she heard an odd noise and spotted an even odder shadow making its way towards her.
"…are you seriously skipping?" she called out, not on edge at all, but more amused as she watched the shadow grow larger the nearer it got, recognizing it anywhere.
"Why are you dressed like that?" the Detective asked as she skipped into a better lit area, pausing to eye River up and down, the woman wearing some sort of blue Victorian attire.
"It's my birthday," River explained, "You and the Doctor took me ice skating on the River Thames in 1814, the last of the great frost fairs. Even got Stevie Wonder to sing for me under London Bridge."
The Detective grinned at that, "So I do know you in the future. Brilliant."
Oh, this was Christmas! This was exactly why she'd wanted to be the one to collect the infamous River Song. Rory got to have all the fun blowing up a Cybership and confronting the Cybermen, the Doctor got to go gather his ragtag bunch of 'soldiers' through space and time, and she was stuck piloting the box and making sure it didn't mutiny and leave the Doctor the second he stepped out of it for using her as a glorified cab. She'd all but demanded to do this trip. He'd been muttering to himself about this River woman and given her the briefest of spark notes about who she was and as soon as he mentioned how he'd run into her once when the woman left a message on a homebox in a museum written in Old High Gallifreyan…and another time by leaving a message graffitied across the oldest cliff face in the Universe…
Well how could she NOT want to meet her?
Because all of that just screamed her own influence, all of it were ways that she HAD used to get the Doctor's attention in the past. Well, not a homebox exactly but an artifact in a museum for him to stumble upon, and it had been more a puzzle to figure out than a homebox recording. Another time she'd hidden her graffiti among a bunch of other graffiti on a wall to see if he would notice the odd symbols among the mishmash of other ones. She loved to use puzzles and clues to lead him to her and hearing that River had done the same? She'd been insistent that she be the one to meet River, for clearly she already had. River had to have learned that trick from somewhere (her).
The Doctor had been of the impression that River hadn't known her and didn't know her...because River had never mentioned it, right to her bitter end she had never breathed a word of another Time Lord being alive. Which had made her snort to hear, because no one knew the Doctor's real name before she popped up because he never mentioned it, didn't mean he didn't have a name. She got the distinct impression, though that River...
"Hello Sigma," River greeted with a smile.
"And you DO know me!" the Time Lady beamed, because technically River COULD have been saying that 'you and the Doctor' in a more general sense like she'd only seen her from the sidelines but not actually spoken to her, but this confirmed it all, "I told him! Didn't I tell him? I so told him you would."
"The Doctor?"
She nodded, "I told him I ought to get you because if you pop up in his timeline as much as he grumbles about then I'd meet you one day and you'd have to know me and it was only right that I at least get to meet you first."
"And that worked?"
"No."
"How'd you get around it?"
"Same way I do everything he disagrees with."
River nodded, "Tied him up and duct taped his mouth shut?"
"And stole the sonic," the Detective grinned, wiggling it to show her the device in her hands.
River laughed at that, "My favorite way to handle him too."
"Is it?"
River just pulled a pair of handcuffs out of her pocket and a small roll of duct tape from her muffle.
"Ooh, I bet I like you," the Detective laughed.
"Very much," River told her, "What about the others?"
"Others?" the Detective eyed her a moment, tilting her head just slightly.
"You're not a fan of the sonic," River mused, "There's no fun in breaking and entering if you can't break things to enter," she spoke, sounding like she was quoting something she'd heard said, "You took it so he couldn't get out. And you'd make sure anyone else with him won't let him out either. Do you have Strax keeping them back at gunpoint?"
"Very good," the Detective nodded, though more to herself than River, "He does love the opportunity to use his guns."
River chuckled, "Now," she took a breath, "What's the Doctor gone and gotten himself into now?"
"Demons Run," the Detective said when River turned to head into her cell, causing her to freeze, "But you knew that already, didn't you?"
It was more a statement than a question, she'd already worked it out with the few words River gave. The fact that she knew Strax was in the TARDIS, that there were others beyond just Rory? The woman had said 'keep THEM back' not 'keep Rory back' or Amy or any one other person. She COULD have been talking about the Ponds as 'them' but she got the feeling River would have just said Amy and Rory if that was the case.
River sighed, turning to look at her, "I always forget how observant you are."
"One of the perks of my perkiness."
River could only chuckle and shake her head, but it was truer than anyone else would guess. The Detective was truly completely mad, literally a ball of energy that zoomed everywhere and struggled to keep her mind on just one thing longer than a few minutes, inhaling sugar at an alarming rate and crashing if she stopped moving too long. She came across as someone to be ignored or brushed aside, to never be taken seriously because half the things she said were nonsense to those who didn't know how to listen. She still didn't know if it was just the innate way the Detective was or if she put on a front to cause any potential enemies to underestimate her. But she truly was like a giant pair of eyes. She saw everything, from body language to facial expressions, saw the smallest cracks in a tale and clues in a room.
She was the Detective because she was constantly putting puzzle pieces together of everything she saw, she just had a way of separating her mind doing that with what her mouth was saying or what her brain was thinking.
"You're from his future," the Detective spoke, giving a shorter explanation for how she knew River already knew of Demons Run, "You know me, you know me more than the current me who's only just meeting you now, which means the only adventures you could have had with me in your past are ones in my future. I'm literally about to head to Demons Run, which means you HAVE to already know what happens there if you know me already."
"It's shocking, isn't it?" River murmured, "How thin the line between madness and genius is?"
The Detective just gave a mock bow before she turned on her heel to go.
"Aren't you going to ask me to help?" River called after her, causing her to pause and turn around.
"You already know they've taken Amy and her baby," the Detective shrugged, "You already know about Demons Run, yet you aren't rushing to help or running with me to the TARDIS or yelling to wait while you change. You have no plans to go join us, so why ask?"
River swallowed hard and nodded, "I can't. Not yet, anyway."
"Thought so," the Detective nodded, "I just wanted to say hello. So…bye!" and then she turned to go again.
"Sigma!" River called out, causing her to pause again, "The battle…" she began, choosing her words carefully, "This is going to be the Doctor's darkest hour. He'll rise higher than ever before and then fall so much further. I WILL be there…but not till the very end."
"Why then?"
"Because this is it," River took a breath, "This is the day he finds out who I am, the day you both do."
The Detective eyed her a moment longer, observing her in a way that had River going very still, as though the slightest move or a single breath would have her see something she couldn't know, not this early.
But then the Detective shrugged, saluted her, and turned to skip off down the hall.
River nearly sagged, stepping back into her cell and falling down on her bed, dropping her head in her hands before chuckling, relieved she'd gotten away with...
"Time Lord minds operate on a different wavelength than humans," a voice said, a voice right at the bars of her cell, causing River to gasp and jerk upright, turning to see the Detective leaning on the bars, her arms hanging through it as she rested her head to a bar and looked at her, "Did you know?" she asked absently, not allowing her a moment to answer before she continued, "Easily detected by another Time Lord if we're paying attention. The Doctor's cut it off, put up a wall, he won't let himself sense for one unless he knows there's one around. And, with yours truly around, any niggling he feels that tells him there's a Time Lord, he thinks it's me," she eyed River, "Contrarily, I've been searching for him and the Master everywhere. My mental shields have never been up," she gave River a pointed look, "Something to think about, next time you try to be cryptic with me."
She snapped her finger and pointed at River, who was staring at her with wide eyes, before turning to actually leave this time, calling a, "Laters!" over her shoulder.
~8~
The Detective had never really understood the phrase 'sing like a canary' until she met one Dorium Maldovar, the very last person the Doctor picked up before they were set to attack Demons Run.
The fat blue man had let slip everything, literally everything, he knew about the Demons Run asteroid base, the woman with the eyepatch Amy kept seeing, Madam Kovarian, the army they had built, led by Colonel Manton, and the church involved in supplying the soldiers, the Headless Monks. And then he'd gone on and on about how he warned them and told them not to anger the Doctor and how they should run, not fight. But they were convinced they'd intimidated the Doctor because it had taken him a month to mount any sort of attack and therefore he wasn't so impressive. After all that, he'd truly thought that would be the end of his involvement, because all he had was knowledge and not any sort of usefulness in attacking or fighting.
It may or may not have made her laugh for round about a minute at that thought.
Once she'd calmed down, it was time to finalize their plan of attack. Of course, because it was the Doctor's companions and the Doctor's allies and the Doctor's TARDIS he thought he should have the final say on what they did. He'd come up with some moving-parts plan where a Silurian named Vastra and her wife Jenny would get to the control room while other Silurians and Strax, a Sontaran, would wait with teleports to come in at a signal. A pirate, Captain Avery, and his crew would disable all escape pods and hide in one to capture anyone trying to escape, while Rory, for some reason dressed as an ancient Roman Centurion, wandered the halls to find Amy or his child, whichever he stumbled upon first. Another team of spitfires would fire at the communications and weapons on the outside of the base. Which left the Doctor to confront the army while she joined him to keep an eye on things.
It was SO convoluted!
She had been the only one to raise her hand when he asked if there were any objections.
Her reasoning: why couldn't they just land the TARDIS around Amy, use the scans to find her child and land around the kid (or wait till they were both together), and then blow up the base? Easy peasy.
Everyone had just stared at her like she was completely mad to suggest blowing up the base with the army still inside. Strax, though, had eagerly gone with her plan, changing his vote to her side. Sadly, they were still out-voted by the Doctor, Rory, Dorium, Vastra, Jenny, and Avery.
Wimps.
She was starting to think that the Doctor wanted her with him to make sure she didn't accidently blow up the base.
Just as she'd thought, it was an entirely boring affair, sneaking into the military base. Just set the TARDIS down on silent and invisible and they were all sneaking out of it while the army was distracted by that Manton person giving a speech on a stage set up in the hanger. It seemed like every soldier was there, at attention, which left the rest of the base vulnerable, all of them human. Honestly, the most dangerous people there were probably the two Headless Monks walking along the side of the room, past their fellow Monks, to join the colonel on stage.
The Doctor didn't even hesitate, throwing up the hood of his own Monk robe and joining the line, creating a group of 3 Monks, which left the Detective pouting and crossing her arm as she watched him go. She looked back when she heard a hissing noise to see the door behind her opening, Vastra shoving an incapacitated guard through to the ground that she and Jenny had taken out on their way out. She beamed, quickly getting to work yanking the man's uniform off, trying desperately not to laugh at the fact he was wearing shorts with little yellow duckies on it underneath, and put it on over her outfit to blend in, trying to ignore the speech going on behind her.
"He is not the devil!" the colonel was shouting, "He is not a god. He is not a goblin, or a phantom or a trickster. The Doctor is a living, breathing man, and as I look around this room I know one thing...we're sure as hell going to fix that."
"Please," she scoffed as the soldiers cheered. If the Master hadn't seen to that by now, no measly human would.
Though she was quite peeved that there was not a single mention of HER in that speech, rude.
"On this day, in this place, the Doctor will fall. The man who talks, the man who reasons, the man who lies, will meet the perfect answer. Some of you have wondered why have we have allied ourselves with the Headless Monks."
She finished buttoning up the last of the uniform, wiggling a bit to get the hood part of her hoodie out from the back of it, when she saw a side door open and another soldier hurry in, clearly late, and moved to follow her at a distance, making it seem like the two of them were just tardy. With some clever positioning, she even managed to end up right next to the girl and right at the front of the stage in full view of the four occupants of it.
Honestly, HOW the soldiers and that colonel didn't notice the ONE Monk NOT wearing sandals but wearing boots was beyond her.
"Perhaps you should have wondered why we call them Headless," the colonel focused on the three now standing behind him.
The Detective covered her snort with what was probably an too-exaggerated cough given the way the soldier beside her glanced at her. But really? THIS was what humans wondered? Why something was called 'headless?' Because it had no head, obviously. Why was this considered some big mystery?
"It's time you knew what these guys have sacrificed for faith. As you all know, it is a Level One Heresy, punishable by death, to lower the hood of a Headless Monk. But by the divine grant of the Papal Mainframe herself, on this one and only occasion, I can show you the truth. Because these guys never can be..." Manton yanked the hood off of the first monk to reveal a knotted stump where the head should have been, "Persuaded! They NEVER can be..." and did the same for the second, "Afraid," and moved to the third one.
The Detective grinned and pulled a small bag out of her pocket, holding it up to the late soldier, "Popcorn?" she offered, grinning at her widely when the girl looked over at her, startled, "This is gonna be good," she winked.
"And!" the colonel continued, "They can never, ever be..."
The monk, without giving the colonel a chance, threw his own hood back to reveal the Doctor, "Surprised?"
"Told ya," the Detective whispered to the stunned soldier beside her, who was now frowning at her like she'd never seen her before. She merely winked a second time, but this time with her other eye to keep things even.
"Hello everyone!" the Doctor laughed, "Guess who?" he moved to the front of the stage, "Please point a gun at me if it helps you relax."
And, of course, that's exactly what each soldier, save the one beside the Detective, did.
"Be right back," she whispered to the girl, picking up her hand to deposit the bag of popcorn into it, "Hold onto that for me, thanks!" and hurried off.
"You're only human," the Doctor added, not even remotely worried about the sounds of the electric swords of the two Monks behind him energizing.
"Doctor!" the colonel pulled his gun, aiming it at the Time Lord, "You will come with me, right now!"
"Will he?" a voice spoke behind him, and a gun cocked, the barrel pressed to the back of his head, "I'd love to see you try."
The Doctor sent a wink to the Detective over his shoulder, "My lovely colleague, the Detective," he introduced, though he also gave her an almost exasperated shake of the head for her dramatics with the gun, he'd been very clear about no guns, that they weren't needed, she'd done it anyway.
"Sigma, please, Theta," she told him with a mock eyeroll, knowing that the humans gathered were probably so dense they wouldn't even realize she'd let his name slip, because his name could be anything and her calling him Theta didn't mean it was. Humans, they missed the obvious quite a lot, didn't they?
"Three minutes, forty seconds!" he turned on his heel, calling out to Amy, who they could both see through a window near the top of the hanger, "Amelia Pond! Get your coat!"
The lights went out for only a moment, starling the soldiers, and when they came back on, the Doctor was gone, the colonel was on the ground on his stomach with is hands and legs bound behind him, duct tape across his mouth, and the Detective was sitting on him.
"Ta-da!" the Detective did jazz-hands, grinning at the soldiers.
The Doctor's voice began to play over the speakers, "I'm not a phantom. I'm not a trickster. I'm a monk."
"Oh hush," the Detective patted the colonel on the head as he began to try and speak through the tape.
"It's him!" one of the soldiers shouted, aiming at one of the Monks lining the sides of the room, "He's here!"
The Detective laughed loudly, "Oh, I love it when you humans descend into chaos," she told them, seeing other soldiers lifting their guns, the Monks activating their swords in response, "It's ever so entertaining! Please, do, go on, slaughter each other and make our escape that much easier."
A tense silence followed, before one of the soldiers shot a Monk, "It's him!" he cried, so sure it was the Doctor.
Which only served to have the Monks retaliate and fire blasts at the soldiers.
The Detective looked over, catching sight of someone fleeing the room out of the corner of her eye, 'Patchy's on her way out,' she called to the Doctor in her mind, warning him so he could use the comm. he'd demanded HE control to let Rory know.
'And Manton?' he asked.
She smirked, 'Handled.'
'Sigma…'
'He's alive,' she huffed, 'That's all you need to know.'
She watched for a little while longer, letting the humans and Monks thin down their numbers, waiting till she'd gotten confirmation from the Doctor that everything else was secure, before she nodded to herself and let out a sharp whistle, piercing enough that both sides stopped and looked over at her.
"Sorry, you just about done now?" she asked, "I've got a roast going and I do hate a dry roast so if you could all discharge your weapons packs and lie them on the ground?" she waited, but no one moved, "No?" she sighed, "Alright then. Strax!" she shouted, using his name instead of what she would have normally called him. Nicknames, apparently, went right over Sontaran heads. WHY he didn't respond to Mr. Potato Head she couldn't imagine, but she'd promised the Doctor to get this right.
And, within the blink of an eye, teleport upon teleport went off, till the sides of the hanger and even the second level of it, the edges all around it, were filled with Silurian soldiers, Strax leading them, weapons in hands, aimed at the humans…weapons that could obliterate them all in mere moments.
"How about now?" she asked, standing, her hands on her hips as she smirked when the humans quickly moved to discharge their packs, "Thank you for your cooperation," she added with a tiny bow.
"This base is now under our command!" Strax called out, striding over to the Detective and Manton, the woman allowing Strax to yank the colonel to his feet.
The Detective tilted her head as the man angrily tried to talk through the tape again, "Sorry, what's that?" she put a hand to her ear, "Oh, are you trying to warn us about the fleet out there?" she asked, startling him to silence as he looked at her with frowning eyes, "Or that, if the base goes down, there's an automatic distress call sent?"
"Good thing we're set to knock out your communications array," the Doctor's voice spoke, and the soldiers looked up to see him standing on a raised scaffolding off to the side, speaking into a microphone, "You've got incoming!"
"Danny Boy to the Doctor," a man called out over the comms., "Danny Boy to the Doctor."
"Give 'em hell, Danny Boy!"
The soldiers could only watch, half in shock and half incredulous as the Doctor and the Detective held their arms out in front of them and pretended to be planes firing at a target, the Detective even making little 'pew, pew, pew' noises as she went.
The base shook moments before another call came in, "Target destroyed!"
"Victory is ours!" the Detective cheered, as the Doctor laughed.
"Don't slump," Strax snapped at Manton as the man hung his head, "It's bad for your spine!"
The Detective gave the man a mocking salute, before hopping of the stage and hurrying back to the one soldier, who, unlike the others, had remained stationary and hadn't pulled her gun, hadn't even looked like she'd moved at all really. She looked down at the bag of popcorn still in the girl's hand and grinned, "Thanking you!" she cheered, snagging it back and skipping back to the platform to munch on it while she waited for the Doctor to get back over.
~8~
It didn't take long at all for the Doctor to climb down from the scaffold he'd spoken from, to get to the stage where Manton was now being held between two Silurians, Kovarian having been caught also by Avery's team and brought there too. Vastra, Jenny, and Dorium had come to join them, the only ones missing were Rory and Amy, the first having gone to find the latter.
"All airlocks sealed," Strax reported as the Doctor approached, joining the Detective, "Resistance neutralized!"
"Sorry, Colonel Manton," the Doctor smirked at him, "I lied. Three minutes, 42 seconds."
"My plan would have been less than 30 seconds," the Detective grumbled, earning a pat on the shoulder from the Doctor as he passed her to confront the colonel.
"Colonel Manton, you will give the order for your men to withdraw," Strax demanded, pointing his gun at the man.
"No," the Doctor cut in, "Colonel Manton...I want you to tell your men to run away."
The man, with his mouth still taped shut, could only glare at the Doctor in defiance.
"Those words," he continued, "Run away. I want you to be famous for those exact words. I want people to call you Colonel Run-Away. I want children laughing outside your door, cos they've found the house of Colonel Run-Away," he strode even closer to the man, pointing a finger in his face, "And, when people come to you, and ask if trying to get to me through the people I love...is in any way a good idea...I want you to tell them your name."
"Always a pleasure to see you angry, Theta," the Detective remarked, so easily it only served to set the other soldiers watching on more on edge that she wasn't even trying to calm him, "You're almost as scary as I am when you are."
He gave a weak, almost forced laugh, and stepped back from the colonel, "That's new," he brushed a hand through his hair, "I'm really not sure what's going to happen now," he admitted to the Detective, turning to her and looking genuinely torn about how angry he'd gotten and the threats he'd made, as though he'd frightened himself with the force of it.
She shrugged, "Jelly Baby?" she offered him a bag from her pocket, having finished the popcorn.
He laughed and took one, popping it into his mouth, knowing not a single person there saw it for what it truly was. He'd frightened himself, he had, but...he hadn't frightened HER. She looked at him, unconcerned with his outburst, understanding, at his side, accepting it in her own stride. He needed that, right at that second, he'd needed to have someone look at him without fear like the soldiers or hatred like Manton or awe like Strax, but just as though he was himself. She didn't care, she hadn't minded, she wasn't treating him differently, and that meant more to him than he could say.
But then Kovarian just had to speak, "The anger of a good man is not a problem. Good men have too many rules."
The Detective snorted and spun on her heel to face her, "You are so out of your depth," she warned the woman, "Good men don't need rules," she tossed the bag of Jelly Babies to the Doctor and walked over to the woman, "Is today really the day you want to find out why he has so many?"
"You saying I'm not a good man?" the Doctor teased, his arms crossed, smirking though as he watched her handle Kovarian.
"Oh, the worst!" she rolled her eyes at him over her shoulder, "You stole my crisps! Automatically makes you the worst person in the universe."
"I bought you three more bags!"
"Get me two more and a pint of ice cream and we'll talk," she countered, "Which reminds me," she spun on her heel again, tilting her head at Kovarian, "Now…anything else you want to say, Patchy? Or are you finished? Because, believe me, I have no problem carving your spine out of you with a rusty spoon if it means you shut up."
"You wouldn't dare," Kovarian glared at her, "You're HIS associate," she fired her look at the Doctor.
"My best mate was also the Master," she spoke, startling the woman, whether with the fact she was a Time Lady or friends with such an infamous Time Lord to rival the Doctor, she wasn't fully sure, but it didn't matter, "What do you think that tells you about ME?" she smirked, "You want to work out why I have no rules at all?"
"And I can say, it's not because she's a 'good woman,'" the Doctor added.
"It's because I don't care for rules, yours or my own," the Detective warned her, "You want to find out what I've learned from the Master? Hmmm? Because I guarantee not even the Doctor would be able to stop me."
Kovarian's lips pursed at that, "Give the order," she told Manton, "Give the order, Colonel Run-Away."
"Brilliant," the Detective patted her on the head and turned to walk over to the Doctor, pausing only to rip the tape off the colonel's mouth so he could give the order before she linked arms with the Doctor and they continued on out of the room.
"You know I WOULD stop you," he murmured to her as they went.
She snorted, "Don't underestimate me, Theta," she warned him, "I never fought you myself. You don't know what I'm capable of."
It was true, she had never fought him herself, not directly. The same way she had never fought the Master herself, directly. She may have, a time or two, dropped hints to the both of them for how to stop the other doing something (for the Doctor) or get the other's attention (for the Master), but she had never been the one literally facing them down. She was the go-between, the one trying to sooth the other's ego when one got one up on the other. He had fought the Master head on, but he knew the Master's tactics, his personality, his faults and flaws, having once been a friend he knew the man's mind and could anticipate what he would do. He didn't have that history with her, he had never seen her tactics, the plans in her head, didn't know the mistakes she could or would make, but she knew HIM and what he could or would do, what he wouldn't do. When he couldn't say the same.
For the first time in a very long while, he was a tiny bit afraid of her.
Though, that was a fairly normal feeling around her, she could be a bit erratic at times.
~8~
"I thought she'd have more hair," the Detective spoke from the doorway where she and the Doctor had come to wait, the two of them leaning around the side of it, her nearly on top of him for balance as they peered in. They were trying to give Amy and Rory a moment more with their daughter as they hugged and kissed within the room Amy had been kept, a stark white area. Amy and Rory broke away from their kiss and spun to face them though, "...and I ruined the moment."
The Doctor chuckled, patting her shoulder as they entered the room and moved over to the Ponds, smiling down at the baby and smiling as he pointed at Amy.
"My daughter," Rory smiled, "What do you think?"
The Doctor opened his mouth to answer, before he blinked and looked at the Detective, "How'd you know it was a she?"
"50-50 chance," she shrugged, though he got a feeling from how she was smirking there was something else behind her answer.
He shook his head and turned back to them, "She's beautiful, Rory," he answered.
"Bald," the Detective whispered, coming up and moving her elbow onto his shoulder.
Amy rolled her eyes, "All babies are bald."
"Hello," the Doctor cut in, not wanting an argument about hair right now, "Hello, baby."
"Melody," Amy spoke.
"Melody! Hello, Melody Pond!"
"Melody Williams," Rory corrected.
But Amy cut him off, "Is a geography teacher. Melody Pond is a superhero!"
The Doctor leaned in closer to listen as the baby gurgled, "Well, yes," he nodded, "I suppose she does smell nice?" he looked to the Detective for confirmation.
"Never really noticed," she shrugged.
He nodded, "Never really sniffed her myself," he agreed, "Maybe I should give it a go. Amelia Pond, c'mere!" he hugged her.
"Doctor!" Amy laughed.
"I'm sorry we were so long," he added, sniffing her.
"It's ok?" she gave him an odd look for that, "I knew you were coming. All of you. My boys…and that one," she added with a teasing smile to the Detective.
"Oh, don't huff," the Detective spoke, more to Melody when the baby squealed than in response to Amy, "She's still all yours."
"And really you should call her Mummy, not Big Milk Thing," the Doctor told the baby.
"Or Thing 2, that works as well," the Detective added.
"Ok, what are you both doing?" Amy had to ask.
"We speak Baby," they said at once.
"No, you don't."
"We speak everything," the Detective told her.
"Don't we, Melody Pond?" he asked, huffing when the baby gurgled again, fixing his bowtie in protest, "No, it's not...it's cool!"
"Do you want to hold her?" Amy offered the Time Lords, seeing her daughter waving her arms at them.
The Detective grimaced, "No, that's alright. Not one for kids."
The humans stared at her.
"What?"
"YOU don't like kids?" Rory had to ask. He hadn't travelled with the Doctor long, but even HE had picked up on how much the man adored children. He'd just assumed any friend of his must like them as well.
"Not my cup of tea, no," she shrugged, "They're all loud and whiny and poop ALL the time…and just wait till you feed her and burp her and blah!" she mimicked projectile vomiting, "All over your back. Thanks, but no thanks."
It wasn't just that, not really. Babies were fine as far as being tiny people went, she was sure there was some sort of appeal to them besides some of them being a bit cute. She had just never really connected with the idea of babies or kids, she didn't want any of her own and...well, if she was being quite honest with herself, which she rarely was, she might even go so far as to say she didn't think she'd be a very good mother even if she did want children.
She might be mad, but she wasn't stupid. She knew what she was like, she knew what she could improve on in her life and what just wouldn't change, what she had tried to change for decades even that just...didn't. She hadn't always been like this, but this was who she was now and she knew her faults and shortcomings very well. It had taken her years, centuries, to work her way out of the madness the Untempered Schism had caused, to fight past it, to try and get some control over it and her mind. And who she was now was the result of all that trying and hard work...and who she was now was not fit to be a mother, in her opinion. She'd be the sort to forget her child at the market or start to heat up a bottle and get distracted and leave it on the stove till the kitchen burned down. SHE wouldn't trust herself to be alone with a child and that was just...it would be hard enough to find a partner on Gallifrey who would be willing to work past her madness let alone someone who would end up having to shoulder a great deal of responsibility for the child because of her own shortcomings. But that was if she even wanted children, she didn't, they just didn't appeal to her the way it did most people. The Doctor's children were fine in small doses, for more than one reason, but even he wouldn't trust her to babysit if he needed one, and she understood, she agreed. If she had been left with his children and something happened to them because of her she'd never forgive herself and she was quite sure it would have set her back a number of decades in getting a handle on her madness. It wasn't something one grew out of, it was something she actively had to work through each and every day.
She had a theory that was why she had such up and down energy levels, or 'modes' as the Doctor and Master used to joke. Her mind just kept pushing through it, working past it, to the point where it couldn't stop and so she couldn't stop either. Just imagining her with a child that needed to take up most of her attention? For her own mental health, the few strands that remained that held what was left of her sanity together, she couldn't handle a child. Even if she did want one, it would probably be a number of millennia of much more focused hard work to get to a point of feeling she could do it and have one and raise it safely. She wasn't that old and she didn't have the patience or the will or desire to put in that much effort to something she didn't want in the first place.
(She pointedly ignored the small voice in her head whispering it was yet another reason she'd never said a word to the Doctor about a number of things. He loved kids, he'd always wanted them, ever since he was a kid himself he'd longed to be a father one day and she couldn't ever give him that, not in any way that would be fair to him.)
The Doctor shook his head at her, "I'll give it a go," he offered, reaching out for Melody, only for Vastra to hurry in, interrupting.
"Doctor!" she called, nodding towards the window of Amy's room to the hanger, "Take a look. They're leaving," she smiled as she watched her brethren and Strax march the soldiers away, "Demons Run is ours without a drop of blood spilled. My friend, you have never risen higher!"
The Detective glanced back at Vastra for those words, recalling what River had said, and glancing at the Doctor...if River's warning was some sort of coded way to tell her that he would end up blowing up the base, she was going to be livid he got to do it instead of her.
~8~
The Doctor rolled his eyes at the Detective's laughter as she followed him through the halls of the TARDIS, trying to make it to the main doors. They'd been in the storage room, which she had dubbed the 'Room of Requirement' due to how much junk was in it, trying to find something or another the Doctor was looking for. They'd gotten a notice that Amy had left the TARDIS with Melody right as the Doctor discovered the wayward object…his cot.
Which the Detective had found hysterical, that, of all the things he'd stored away in the box over the years, his itty bitty baby cot was one of them. She had taken one look and burst out laughing, which led to him grumbling all the way to the console room where they could hear the loud lungs of Melody Pond as she cried from somewhere outside the box.
"You should have just turned the volume down a bit," the Detective finally calmed, wiping a tear from her eye. It was probably an overreaction, laughing quite that much to something so small, but they'd all been dreadfully serious for a MONTH trying to get Amy and a plan in place and she felt good to finally have a strong laugh come out. Amy had asked him to try and mute the TARDIS noise, but he'd thrown a 'I don't want to punch a hole in the space-time continuum' over his shoulder before dragging her off to storage.
...she was fairly certain she may or may not have heard Amy herself grumbling about how they were going to 'find a cupboard to snog in' or something.
"Yeah, yeah," he huffed, now able to hear the other adults arguing over WHY the baby was crying.
"My money's on wet diaper," the Detective told him.
He snorted, "Aren't you listening?" he countered, "She's not hungry!" he called out, hearing that being the main thought, as they stepped out of the box and over to the others with the cot, "She's tired. Sorry, Melody, they're just not listening."
"What's this?!" Amy asked, bobbing her baby as the Doctor set the cot up.
"Do they not have cots on earth?" the Detective wondered, moving to pull the little blanket inside the cot to the side for the Doctor as he turned to Amy.
"Give her here," he held out his hands for the baby as Amy passed her over, "Hey!" and carefully placed her in the cot, taking the edge of the blanket to put over the baby, tucking her in slightly.
"Where would you get a cot?" Rory asked, eyeing it.
"Did you not see us leave the TARDIS with it?" the Detective continued her own questioning.
"It's old," Amy observed, "Really old. Doctor...do you have children?"
"Thing 2, super harsh," the Detective frowned at her, "Think about what happened to the planet and ask yourself if you REALLY want to be asking that IF the answer was yes."
Amy's eyes shot wide open and she looked at the Doctor apologetically, "Forget I asked."
The Doctor, though, just focused on Melody, trying his hardest to act like he hadn't heard the question in the first place, "No, it's real, it's my hair," he listened to her gurgling a moment, "Yeah, I know, looks like a mop doesn't it?" he chuckled, tugging on the Detective's hair. It was a pale blonde, not quite platinum, not grey, just a very light yellow, which reminded Melody of a mop apparent.
"Doctor!" Vastra's voice came over the comm., "We need you and the Detective in the main control room."
"Be right there!" he called back, turning to the humans in apology, "Things to do. Sigma and I have still got to work out what this base is for. We can't leave till we know," he turned to head off with her.
They'd discussed it, while they'd been searching for the cot, that once Vastra and Dorium cracked the security and got every scrap of information related to Amy and Melody they could, that SHE would help him go over it. She had the attention span of a gnat most times, but for things that were very important to her, she could have a laser focus, usually if it was something involving him, the Master, or a mystery. And this was one of the sorts of mysteries she loved to put together. If there was anyone he trusted to help him crack the code of WHY they wanted Amy and her baby, it would be her.
"But this is where I was?" Amy called out, causing the Doctor to pause, the Detective taking a few more steps before realizing he had stopped, "The whole time I thought I was on the TARDIS, I was really here."
"Erm...Centurion," the Doctor turned to Rory, "Permission to hug?"
Rory rolled his eyes, but nodded, "Be aware, I do have a sword."
"Just rub it in, Thing 1," the Detective muttered, pouting with her arms crossed. SHE had called dibs on the sword but, apparently, it 'pulled off the look' more for Rory than her, according to the Doctor. She was sure he just didn't want her to have a sword after that last time...
"At all times," the Doctor saluted Rory, ignoring the Detective's grumblings to move and hug Amy tightly, "You were on the TARDIS, too...your heart, your mind, your soul. But physically, yes, you were still in this place."
"And when I saw that face looking through the hatch..." Amy pulled away, "That woman looking at me..."
"Reality bleeding through."
"They would have had to take you quite a while back," the Detective reasoned, "You said you went to America," she recalled the Doctor mentioning it just after they'd reunited. He'd given her a very brief description of what he'd been up to since the war. She didn't need to know what happened before the war, she'd been there, off on the side, constantly watching him and the Master clash and keeping out of it until one or the other needed their bruised ego soothed. He'd mentioned a group of aliens, the Silence, that had sparked all this mess, how they'd been found in America, "Were you separated, at any point?"
Amy fell silent, able to think of at least three major times she'd been away from the others. The bathroom in the White House, the three months spent running around the world trying to find the Silence, and then when she'd been captured by the Silence itself. She thought it might be the bathroom. She'd thought she was pregnant around that time, but when she hadn't grown any bigger she'd assumed she was wrong, that the sick feeling she got was the affect of the Silence. The aliens probably took her from the orphanage that one time just to keep the Doctor unaware that she'd been swapped with a Ganger earlier, it wasn't like they could just leave her there without it being suspicious.
"So her Flesh avatar was with us all that time," Rory frowned, "But that means they were projecting a control signal right into the TARDIS. Wherever we were in time and space."
"Which is quite brilliant," the Detective began, sighing when the Doctor shot her a disapproving look, "Which is quite terrible," she amended, "They're clever, and he hates when people are more clever than him."
"Who?" Amy shook her head.
Rory caught on though, "Whoever wants our baby."
"But why do they want her?"
"Exactly!" the Doctor pointed at them, before nodding his head to the side for the Detective to follow him.
This time it was Rory who called out and stopped them, "Is there anything you're not telling us? You knew Amy wasn't real, you never said."
"Well, I couldn't be sure they weren't listening."
"But you always hold out on us," Amy joined her husband, "Please, not this time. Doctor, it's our baby. Tell us something. One little thing."
"It's mine."
"What is?" Rory tensed.
The Detective let out a small laugh, "Blimey Theta, better way to phrase it!" she elbowed him, "You made it sound like the baby was yours instead of the cot."
"The cot?" Rory blinked, nearly sagging with relief at the Detective's words, "The COT is his?"
"Yes, Rory, it's my cot," the Doctor winced, realizing how that sounded too, "I slept in there."
"Come on," the Detective whispered loudly when Amy and Rory both turned to the cot, taking his hand and tugging him on, "Now's our chance to leave before they call us back again."
The Doctor chuckled, shifting to let go of her hand, putting an arm around her shoulder instead as they headed off.
~8~
The two Time Lords entered the communication room of the base, where Vastra and Dorium had gathered, seeing a number of statistics and charts and data up on the monitor.
"You've hacked into their software then?" the Doctor asked as they moved over to look closer.
"I believe I sold it to them," Dorium remarked.
"Don't care," the Detective leaned forward, resting her hands on the back of Dorium's chair, nearly dipping it back and startling him, "What's it say?"
"Yes, what have we learned?" the Doctor clapped his hands.
"That anger is always the shortest distance to a mistake," Vastra spoke.
"I'm sorry?"
"The words of an old friend who once found me in the London Underground, attempting to avenge my sisters on perfectly innocent tunnel diggers."
"Well...you were very cross at the time."
"Yean, still don't care," the Detective cut in, "Human baby, what's so special about her that the Church would do all this?"
"It's because she isn't human," Vastra spoke.
The Doctor scoffed, "Of course she is! Completely human, what are you talking about?!"
Dorium brought up some scans and images of the baby's DNA, "They've been scanning her since she was born and I think they found what they were looking for."
"Human DNA."
The Detective squinted at the image, pulling her magnifying glass from her pocket to look closer, "Blimey…" she breathed, "Human PLUS Time Lord," she grimaced, "Oh, eww, Theta, what did you DO? IS the baby yours?'
"What?! NO!"
"Well the only other way that you'd get DNA like that, if you and Amy didn't do the dirty behind Rory's back, which I'd have to kill you for, because your mum, bless that saint, raised you better than that, is if she endured prolonged exposure to the Time Vortex during…"
But he cut her off, "She's human," he insisted, "She's Amy and Rory's daughter."
"Yes, and Time Lords were Gallifreyans who became what we are now through that same prolonged exposure to the Time Vortex. The Untempered Schism..."
"Over billions of years!" he argued, "It didn't just happen."
She snorted, "Theta, you told me Amy tried to sleep with you the night before her wedding. What do you think she'd do with her husband on the night OF her wedding?" he fell silent, "WERE they in the TARDIS then?"
"No, no," he shook his head frantically, "I mean…" his mind raced to match the dates, "Maybe? Technically the first time they were on the TARDIS together, in this version of reality, was on their..."
"On their what?" Vastra frowned, just barely keeping up with them.
He gulped, looking at the Detective with wide eyes, "On their wedding night."
"Well, there you go," the Detective put her magnifying glass away, "Apparently, if conception begins while travelling through the Vortex, it gives them one hell of a head start to cooking up a new Time Lord."
"And they've been working very hard ever since," Vastra agreed.
"And yet they gave in so easily," Dorium spoke again, "Does this not that bother anyone else?"
"Wimps," the Detective brushed it off.
The Doctor wasn't paying much attention though, focused on the startling revelation about Melody Pond, "Amy! She worried the baby would have a time head. She said that..."
"Only you would ignore the instincts of a mother!" Vastra huffed.
"Or the instincts of a coward," Dorium continued to complain, "This is too easy. There's something wrong."
"Then go investigate it," the Detective turned to him, "Liz, go with him please. Make sure he doesn't make a run for it."
Vastra rolled her eyes at the Detective's name for her, but nodded, turning to go with Dorium out of the room, sensing she'd said so less for Dorium and more to give the Doctor space during his small crisis.
"Why even do it?" he muttered after a moment of silence, just the two of them, "Even if you could get your hands on a brand new Time Lord, what for?"
"Well, call me mad," she held up a hand to stop him doing just that, "But whenever a military organization gets involved, it's usually for a weapon."
He looked at her, completely befuddled, "Why would a Time Lord be a weapon?"
"Why would the Time Lords make a Time Lord into a weapon?" she countered with a shrug, thinking back to the Master and the few things the Doctor had told her about since they found each other again. He'd given her a more detailed recount of what their other friend had been up to on Earth those last two times he'd encountered the man, "To stop another Time Lord."
The Doctor stiffened at her reasoning. It happened with the Master, the High Council had manipulated the entire course of his life to both make him a way to save Gallifrey and stop anyone who would try to stop him…like the Doctor. If that was why they'd gotten their hands on a near-Time Lord…to stop a Time Lord, HE was the only one they knew of, at least he hoped so. Madam Kovarian had looked rather startled to find out the Detective knew the Master, was friends with them both, clearly she hadn't known the Detective existed. He would rather they target HIM than the Detective.
He let out a breath as that reality hit him, sitting down on one of the vacated chairs, stunned. He couldn't help but think about the little girl, the astronaut suit, how she was human but very strong. Had that been the Church's first attempt at stopping him? Merely raising an augmented human? And when that failed, they moved onto Melody? Or had that been her all along?
"Oh, look, it's Patchy," the Detective huffed, annoyed, and he turned to see Madam Kovarian appear on the screen behind him.
"Do you understand yet?" the woman asked, looking more at him than the Detective, "Oh, don't worry, I'm a long way away. But I like to keep tabs on you. The child then...what do you think?"
"What is she?" he asked.
"Hope. Hope in this endless, bitter war."
"What war?" the Detective snorted, "We won the war before it even started."
"The war against the Doctor is not over," Kovarian stated, glaring at the Detective.
"A child is not a weapon!" the Doctor snapped at her.
"Oh, give us time. She can be. She will be."
"Except you've already lost her, and I swear I will never let you anywhere near her again."
"Oh, Doctor. Fooling you once was a joy...but fooling you twice, the same way, it's a privilege."
The Detective frowned at that, thinking about it a moment. They fooled the Doctor once with the Ganger of Amy and…
"Ganger!" she gasped.
The Doctor was already heading for the door, having realized the same thing, "Amy!" he shouted as they ran down the halls, "Amy! Amy, Amy, Amy!" they nearly threw themselves at a door leading back to the hanger, which was sealed and bolted shut…not a good sign, "Amy!"
The Detective moved to the small window in the door, peering through and gasping at what she saw beyond, "Theta…we're too late," she warned him.
He looked at her, refusing to believe it, and soniced the door open, "Amy, she's not real! Melody's a Flesh avatar," he bound into the room, stumbling to a halt when he saw that a fight had clearly happened, some of their allies were injured, Amy was sobbing in Rory's arms…and Melody was nowhere to be seen.
"Yeah," Rory looked up at them, "We know."
The Detective took a breath, looking around at those gathered and those fallen. Strax was muttering something to Vastra as she knelt beside him, Jenny was over by that one soldier girl from before who looked near death, and the Ponds were off to the side, the Doctor heading to them, not noticing the others.
"So they took her anyway," Amy sniffled, seeing them approach, "All this was for nothing."
"I am so...sorry," the Doctor breathed, trying to hug her, but she flinched away.
The Detective frowned, "It's not his fault."
"I know," Amy began to cry, Rory hugging her tighter, "I know…"
"Doctor!" Jenny called over, "Over here, there's someone who wants to speak to you."
The Doctor glanced between the Ponds and the Detective, who nodded for him to go join Jenny and the soldier, while the Detective stood back with them.
"It'll be ok, Amy," the Detective spoke, sounding oddly serious and subdued compared to her normal tone.
"How?" Amy nearly sobbed, "They took my baby!"
Rory had to look away, not wanting others to see him breaking down, needing to be strong for Amy.
"It took me ages...but I found them," the Detective told her, "The Doctor…AND the Master," she admitted, "The daft loon went and turned himself into a human named Yana, hid away at the end of the Universe. Ooh, I was tempted to wake his ass up..."
And she had been. It took her almost the full century to finally track him down through time and space with nothing but a measly Vortex Manipulator to help, but she'd done it. She'd found him, but the man she'd found wasn't the Master any longer and...he just...she didn't have the hearts to bring him back, knowing he wasn't in as much pain any longer. Oh he still had headaches, the drumming in his head, but he'd lived a full and good life, he had a purpose, he was helping. He was...he was the man she knew he'd always dreamed of being, before the Untempered Schism changed him. He...he was free, from all the torment and the guilt, all the aftereffects of madness the Schism caused. He'd found a way to escape it and she couldn't drag him back to that life.
So she'd left, her hearts heavy but feeling like she'd at least made a choice for his benefit and not for a selfish reason. She wanted her best mate back, terribly, but he'd chosen this life, he'd wanted this persona, this personality, and it felt so much like it was his one chance to be happy again, without the burden of all that he had been on Gallifrey. So she gave up her friend, to give him his best chance, and left to find the Doctor, swearing to herself that she wouldn't tell him where the Master was, because he would go after him. She knew he would, he'd been alone too long he'd want as many of their people back as possible and she couldn't do that to the Master.
Apparently she'd missed the Doctor by a small margin when she'd left Yana, and an entirely new mess had been happening while she'd been waiting in Ancient Greece. And she'd lost her best mate two times over without even knowing it.
The Doctor still didn't know she'd found Yana before he had, and he never would.
Just because the Doctor lied, didn't mean she told the truth either.
She cleared her throat, realizing the Ponds were staring at her as she'd gotten lost in thought, "He seemed happier, more content, living there than he ever had anywhere and anywhen else…so I left him and his weird cockroach assistant, Chan-Tho. God she was annoying, she kept starting every sentence with Chan and ending it with Tho and…"
"Is there a point to this?" Amy nearly snapped.
"The point is, I found the only two Time Lords left alive, in all of space and time," the Detective told her, "I can find Melody. And I will, I promise you."
"How?" Rory looked at her, "You said it took you decades to find them, we don't have that."
"There's this thing called a TARDIS, maybe you've heard of it…travels in TIME…"
"You can't," Amy sniffled, "There's all those laws about crossing timelines and…"
The Detective snorted, "My best mates were the Doctor and the Master," she gave them a pointed look, "You really think I care, at all, about the rules?" she looked between the two, "And for that matter...I may not like children, but I would never, ever see this happen to one. I learned a lot from those two...what do you think I'll do to them when I find the ones who took her?"
Amy just began to smile, when a flash of light went off and a clap of sound, and River was standing right in the middle of the room.
"Well, then, soldiers," she greeted, "How goes the day?"
"I give it an 8 out of 10 for dramatic entrance," the Detective remarked, moving over to her.
"Really, just an 8?"
"Add in a couple fireworks or explosions and you're golden."
The Doctor, however, was NOT as happy to see River as the Detective was, storming over to her with fury on his face, "Where the hell have you been? Every time you've asked, I have been there. Where the hell were you today?"
"I couldn't have prevented this," River told him.
"You could've tried!"
"And so could you," she pointed out, glancing over at Amy and Rory, taking pity on them, "I know you're not alright. But hold tight, Amy, because you're going to be."
"You think I wanted this?" the Doctor demanded, "I didn't do this. This...this wasn't me!"
"This was exactly you," River deadpanned, "All this, all of it. You make them so afraid. Even more now that Sigma's around, have you any idea what they're going to think? Having the Master's best mate at your side?" she shook her head, "When you began, all those years ago, sailing off to see the universe, did you ever think you'd become this?"
The Detective's hand shot into the air but the Doctor pointed a finger at her in warning and she huffed, lowering it.
River tried not to laugh at that, focusing instead on the Doctor, "The man who can turn an army around at the mention of his name?"
"The MENTION of his name," the Detective repeated, coming to stand beside River, her elbow on the woman's shoulder, nodding along.
"Doctor, the word for healer…"
"Healer."
"And wiseman throughout the universe. We get that word from you, you know."
"From YOU," the Detective reached out to poke him in the stomach.
"But if you carry on the way you are, what might that word come to mean?"
"What will it mean!?"
"To the people of the Gamma Forests, the word 'Doctor' means mighty warrior."
"Not the yoga pose, BTW," the Detective nodded.
"Ok, can you stop that?" the Doctor cut in, "Is that really as annoying as it comes across?" he asked River.
River didn't answer, just finished what she wanted to say, "How far you've come. And now they've taken a child...the child of your best friends..."
"Best HUMAN friends," the Detective HAD to cut in there, a grimace on her face at the implication that she and the Master might have had a child for them to steal or that she and the Master weren't more important to him than his human friends, which she knew was ridiculous, but the humans might take offense to that realization.
"And they're going to turn her into a weapon, just to bring you down. And all this, Doctor...in fear of you."
The Doctor could only stare at her, "Who are you?"
"Really, Theta, you still haven't pieced it together?" the Detective remarked, "Open your mind, sense how many Time Lords are here."
He frowned at her, "Two, you and…"
"Three," the Detective corrected, "Come on now, really SENSE it."
He closed his eyes a moment, huffing as he focused on that tickle in the back of his mind, that sense of a Time Lord being near, one he'd cut off until he'd found the Detective again, "Alright," he muttered, "There's you and me a…" he cut himself off, his eyes snapping open as he looked at River…then to the Ponds…and back to her, "No."
"Yes," River smirked at him.
"Took him long enough, didn't it?" the Detective teased. As soon as she'd gotten near that baby…she'd sensed it, the beginnings of a Time Lord wavelength, just…not quite right. Seeing the DNA, knowing that Kovarian had taken the baby to finish the process, wanting to create a Time Lord, there was more to it than just conception, more that would need to be done to ensure the child grew more alien than human. But piecing things together was what she lived for.
She'd worked it out, she'd sensed it in Stormcage, the only other Time Lord around, the only other person operating on the same wavelength as her and the Doctor…was River.
River Song.
Pond, Melody.
Clever.
"I can prove it," River added, turning to walk over to his cot, the Time Lords following to see that a Prayer Leaf of the Gamma Forests, meant to have the name of the child on it, had been left lying there…River on one side of it, by their translation since they had no word for Pond when the only water in the Forest was the River, and it was only too clear what would be on the other.
"Hello," he breathed.
"Hello," River smiled.
"But...but that means..." he began to laugh a bit.
"I'm afraid it does."
"But you and I, we, we, we, er..." he mimicked kissing.
"We did."
"Oh, you did?" the Detective grimaced, "Ewww!"
River laughed, shaking her head, knowing by now what the Detective sounded like when she was disgusted and what level it was. That wasn't an 'eww' because the idea of kissing the Doctor was gross, but a combination of imagining the Pond's child kissing him and of him kissing another woman, and partly of her trying to make it sound like it was that of a friend teasing another for getting a kiss.
Oh those two, they were so used to hiding their feelings and denying them, it was just second nature at this point, to never let on to the other how they actually felt. She wanted to just reach out and smush their faces together and go 'kiss!' but refrained. In their own time. She'd created enough of the future as it was just being there.
"He kisses all his companions now, it's apparently a thing," River teased, before giving the Doctor a look, "But no more of that," she told him, serious, moving her arm around the Detective's shoulder, "There are rules."
"Rules?" he blinked.
"Girl code."
"What?"
"What like human girl-code or Time Lady girl-code?" the Detective even had to ask, a little confused herself.
"Oh, I'm so glad I don't have to pretend you don't exist anymore," River laughed, sounding genuinely happy about that.
The Doctor opened his mouth to say something, when her words caught up to him. He thought back to the Library, to the Byzantium, to the Pandorica, and the Lake side…all the times River appeared and never said a word about the Detective being alive, "Oi!" he frowned at her, actually hurt.
On one level, he could understand timelines, he'd have gone mad looking for her if River told him earlier she was alive. But on the other hand, he wouldn't have been alone for so long.
"Really?" the Detective looked at her, "Made him think I was still dead?"
"Just the way you would have wanted it," River defended, sounding more like she wanted to also add on 'just the way you love to mess with him' but went in another direction.
"True."
"Even got a kiss out of it to really throw him off," River winked at her which only served to earn an odd look from the Detective.
The Doctor shook his head, running a hand down his face, as he observed them, getting the sense that this was going to be like having two Sigmas around again, before he noticed the Ponds growing quickly more agitated the longer no one spoke up about their child…their child who just so happened to be standing before them fully grown. A child he needed to find as soon as he could, no one deserved to be left to the mercy of someone like Kovarian.
"How do I look?" he asked River, straightening his bowtie.
"Amazing," River said, at the same time the Detective went "Eh," with a shaky half-and-half hand motion.
"I'd better be."
"Yes, you'd better be."
"Vastra and Jenny!" the Doctor suddenly called out, spinning on his heel, "Till the next time. Rory and Amy, we'll find your daughter and on my life, she will be safe. River, get them all home," he headed for the TARDIS, reaching out to snag the Detective's hand to drag her along, so she and River would stop plotting against him as he was sure they were doing in that secret way only girls could do.
"Doctor?" Rory called.
"No!" Amy yelled, "Where are you going? No!"
But the Doctor had already taken down the forcefield that had been erected around the TARDIS, the two of them entering, the Detective sending River a small salute before the door shut and the box began to vanish.
"I would not want to be her," the Detective rushed to join him at the console, "Thing 2's going to be bloody furious when she finds out River's her daughter."
A/N: Just starting by saying there's a quick announcement further down about pairing names for the Doctor and Detective ;)
Fun little fact, this and the Christmas chapters are the shortest ones in this series (and the Christmas ones only because the episode is split in 3), every other chapter is over 15k words, one even surpassed 20k ;)
We got more of a look into quite a few things here :) Sigma is not as big on children as the Doctor is. But, as she said, just because they aren't her cup of tea doesn't mean she would want anything bad to happen to them. She's just not as interested in them or in having any of her own. So we will likely not see any Theta/Sigma kiddies running around. It's a number of things, like she said, her own personality, her own shortcomings, and just her general feeling on the subject. I think, beyond her just not really wanting to be a mother, a small part of it is also her mental health, as she said. The amount of anxiety she would feel being responsible for a child and having the attention she needs to focus on her own madness in order to function somewhat normally, it wouldn't be good for her :( But that's also if she even wanted children so it's sort of moot at this point.
But, what's this? She LIED to the Doctor!? O.O Well, she IS the Doctor's friend and if he lies, there's no reason Sigma wouldn't lie when she needs to. And she had her reasons to not tell the Doctor she'd found the Master before he did. She understands the Master in a way the Doctor can't, given they both went Mad at the Schism when he was one of the run aways. That sort of theme will actually be relevant to the Triumvirate concept. But she knows that pain the Master is in much more profoundly than the Doctor ever could, even if their madnesses manifested in different ways, there are some underlying similarities that come into play. So when she makes the choice to leave the Master where he is, it's not that she's picking the Doctor over him or doesn't care enough to return the Master or doesn't want him back, it's that she understands, better than anyone, how much LESS his pain is being Yana than being himself :( And we all saw Yana was still in some pain even as a human, so it says a lot to how the Master was feeling in his true body :(
That's the danger in Sigma, when you think about it. She has been there for both the Doctor and the Master from the start, going back and forth between the sides, observing how they fight and what they do, learning about their strategies. SHE knows how to fight either one of them but neither of them know how to go against her because neither of them have actually fought her. They don't know what she'd do or how she'd act or the plans she'd make O.O
I hope it was believable, Sigma sort of working out who River was with just one meeting. But I figure, if Melody became Time Lord enough to regenerate, and enough to have her mind be good enough for the download in the Library, then her mind must be comparable to a Time Lord's. And with them being telepathic in nature, their minds must be on some different wavelength than a human. The Doctor closed himself off to other Time Lords being around, and so, I think, he'd block that part of it unless he KNOWS there's a Time Lord there. And, as Sigma pointed out, he'd sense her first and just brush off anything else, not that River was in the same room as her while the Doctor was around before that moment. Sigma has been open to that wavelength and so she picked up on River's much easier than the Doctor did :)
We'll see a lot more about how Sigma reacts to River in the next chapter since she sort of came in in the middle of everything. They seem fine with each other for now, but what about when River just begins? }:)
Quick announcement! :D
Since this story is a confirmed Doctor/OC, and we know both the Doctor and the Detective's real names, that means we can start looking at a pairing name! :D
So if anyone has any suggestions for pairing names, drop a review and let me know! I'll be putting up a poll for it in, say when I post the God Complex for us to vote on it ;)
Hint about the quotes: sadly only 1 quote in this chapter, and 1 tiny bonus reference ;)
Quotes from the last chapter:
I'll never let go, Jack! I'll never let go, I promise! - Titanic, movie
...cause an internal blitzkrieg with your lower intestines playing the parts of Czechoslovakia - Big Bang Theory
(finish each other's...) Sandwiches? - Frozen
One Ring to Rule them all - Lord of the Rings
References:
We're Off to See the Wizard - Wizard of Oz
Could be the Matrix - The Matrix
Congrats to anyone who spotted them :D
Some notes on reviews...
I can say we'll see a great deal of the friendship aspect of Sigma and the Doctor in this story, their feelings won't come to light (to each other) for a while so it'll focus more on that. They are very affectionate with each other in (what they've come to see as) a platonic way even if everyone else around them sees more to it than they do. The series as a whole will be a Doctor/OC pairing though, I would say, safe betting is to just assume any OC in one of my stories (who isn't a child of an OC) will be romantically paired with someone from the show/movie I'm writing in. I don't know why it happens like that, it's just how the OCs form and pop out in my head demanding to be written lol :) Missy won't be appearing in this story though (sorry!) as the story follows the events of the TV show per series so we won't get Missy until the story after next ;) I won't be cutting the kissing on the cheek or other affectionate gestures between Sigma and the Doctor as (we'll learn soon) they play a part in the backstory of Sigma's madness and her relationship with the Doctor and the Master, so I can't really cut them out since they're part of a larger whole. If they make you uncomfortable though, I can add in a warning at the start of the chapters that they will include sort of PDA and other affectionate gestures. I'm not sure who you meant to be behind the Silence kidnapping Amy, I think part of your review might have gotten cut off? If you meant have Sigma be behind it, timeline wise, she couldn't really orchestrate it as she's as in the dark as the Doctor about who they are ;) For as easily distracted as she can get, when it's something important to her (and we'll also learn that, to her, nothing is more important than her Triumvirate), she can have laser focus, so when she says she spent time looking for the Master she is being dead serious and did nothing but that, then when she failed she set down on the beach to wait for the Doctor to check his email ;) You make very interesting suggestions, the story is already written out in its entirety though. I always have a story prewritten to near completion before I post it to ensure I can post it without having to drag out updating and also to ensure I'm not unconsciously using someone else's ideas in my work, I like it to be as original from my mind as possible ;) Sigma won't ever really get too close to the Companions, in a sense of truly bonding with them, to her they are like how the TARDIS sees them, stray dogs the Doctor picks up. Doesn't mean she won't talk to them about things, but she won't ever have that deep bond that other OCs I've written had. We'll start to see a pattern in how she interacts with people that signifies how important that person is to her and sadly not many will come close to being that important to her :( I wish I could say more, but many points play into a larger whole for Sigma, it'll hopefully come together like puzzle pieces over time :)
Demons Run was sort of mishmash of Sigma wanting to 'go all out' and the Doctor having to be the mature/rational one saying 'no.' But there will be a consequence of Demons Run we'll see later that will definitely show enemies they may want to think twice before trying to harm anyone the Doctor considers a friend };)
The Detective will definitely have a distance with the companions that the Doctor lacks, so when they get a bit too entitled, she's there to be like 'dude, step back and take a breath' :) I imagine Rose would be quite a pickle for the Doctor, on the one hand his feelings for her, on the other hand literally 1/3 of his Triumvirate back with him that he thought he lost forever who he probably needs way more than he consciously realizes. I think Rose would see a much different side to the Doctor with Sigma around than how he is with her, that easy affection, that close bond they have, that trust, and I feel like Sigma would handle it in a way where she's not being overly cruel or outwardly or intentionally harsh to Rose but just her normal self and the Doctor not saying a word about it would probably hit Rose way harder than having Sigma be outright mean to her. You never know, we may see some of that in a possible AU ;) As for Demons Run, she was definitely more for the 'let's blow stuff up!' route, sadly the Doctor had to go all mature on that plan :/
Awesome spotting! :) Lol, I haven't seen them no, but I'm going to have to look them up if that part reminded you of them, they sound very interesting, thank you! :)