-Chapter 5-
Canton didn't like climbing fire escapes.
In movies it seemed natural. The star would pull down the oiled ladder, climb up, run across and up the stairs, all along the side of the building. No one ever struggled with the very much unlubricated, unwilling ladder, glued to the railings by age. No one ever had trouble pulling himself over the area that separated ladder from floor. No one ever had to pace themselves because they had been jogging a good twenty minutes previously.
It was all rather misleading, Canton thought, feeling a poor excuse for a secret agent and not one bit in a movie.
Agent Lee ran up fire escapes like a movie star.
When Canton pulled himself over the rooftop, Lee already had his gun out. At what appeared to be a twelve year old boy.
"It's okay, Canton," Lee called without looking back. "I've found a small boy. Best get out your firearm." The boy was awestruck, a deer in headlights. Around him were scraps of old comic books that had been partially assembled into piles but mostly scattered and charred.
"You serious?" Canton's eyebrow did that thing again. But this time it was a reflex to cover his stomach sinking. Lee was crazy and Canton was going to have to deal with that sooner rather than later.
Canton still got out his revolver. For appearances, he told himself. Best not to antagonize the crazy man with the gun. This was a lesson you learned quickly in the agency.
Lee's gun was pointed straight at the boy's head. "Time to come back home, Doctor Song." Lee's gun was shaking. "Tricky, disguising yourself as a bespeckled little boy. But you can't fool me."
The little boy said nothing. Just looked into the barrel of Agent Lee's gun.
"You mean River Song?" Canton said without thinking. Thinking probably would have been good at that moment.
Agent Lee turned slowly, and pointed his gun at Canton. In the corner of his eye, Canton saw the small boy fall back, painting in relief, but mostly he looked at Agent Lee's gun. He wished he wasn't sweating so much. It was hard to look cool under pressure if you were soaked with sweat.
"What do you know about Doctor River Song?" Agent Lee looked at Canton as if seeing him for the first time.
"How did you find me?" Melody asked, shaking the Doctor's hand. Bewildered.
"Hah. I'm the Doctor. I can find anyone." The Doctor smiled a sincere and self-indulgent smile. "Naturally, I mapped a five-dimensional graph between your sightings plus residual regenerative energy levels in the lower Manhattan area over the last ten months plus pigeon population levels - don't know why that became valuable data - in Washington Square park. With some partially sentient chalk." He paused, as if daring Melody to ask how chalk could be "sentient".
Melody didn't know the word so she just forced a smile and gave him a look that told him to continue. The Doctor did so happily, quite pleased.
"Then I plugged it into an improvised computer I fashioned out of the same chalk…" He trailed off, smile fading.
"I didn't understand that," Melody said, wondering when the handshake was going to end. Then, "You did that all in fifteen minutes?"
"Ah, well." The Doctor broke the handshake and pointed towards the park off to the North. "Technically, I'm still there. The whole process took about four hours. Got some funny looks, but most of the crowds began to thin - well, run - after the chalk numbers started working out the math by themselves. They got the gist of what I was doing and took it from there." The Doctor gave a little chuckle, seemingly to himself. "They also started to glow once the sun set. But what's the point of sentient chalk if it isn't also glow-in-the-dark?"
"Wait." Melody was beginning to come out of the shock of a strange man being on the roof next to her, giving way to general confusion. But she could already feel that confusion giving way to a greater curiosity. "If it took ten hours how are you here… now?" Melody had the strangest feeling that this point should have bothered her much more than it actually did. The Doctor's smile faded.
"Because sentient chalk… well, not so good at math as it turns out." The Doctor shrugged. "Complete nonsense, I'm afraid. So I just asked her to find you." The Doctor pointed his thumb behind him.
Melody squinted. There was a blue box with doors and a light on the top and a sign that said "Police Box". How had she not noticed that?
"Melody, meet the TARDIS. I didn't even have to ask that nicely, in the end. She does like making me run through my other options first." The Doctor stood up, leaned down, and whispered, "Don't let on, but I think she likes you."
Melody could feel something radiating off of the blue box - TARDIS - in the back of her head. It was a strange feeling, not something she could quite put into words, even to herself. Almost how she felt after she died, which, she realized, may have had something to do with the fact that she had just died.
Almost as if it was brought on by the memory, a small burp of golden light leaked from Melody's mouth. Her heart jumped, but the Doctor pretended not to notice. Badly, but politely.
Melody didn't know what to make of a grown man who wore bow ties, appeared on secluded rooftops, surprised crying young girls, and fed them nonsense tales. Men who weren't phased by glowing energies.
It occurred to Melody that she shouldn't trust this strange man. She had come not to trust anyone on the streets.
That was a lie.
She hadn't trusted anyone for as long as she could remember, what little she could remember. Suddenly, a flash of the white room came into Melody's head. She shuddered and pushed it down. She looked back up at the Doctor, who was still pretending not to be keenly observing her. No, there was no reason that anyone, especially Melody, should rightly trust this man, dropped out of the blue.
But Melody found that she did trust the Doctor. That frightened her. More than any blue box or surprise visit or dream ever could.
"As for the timing," the Doctor continued, "I'm not quite sure. The old girl has her reasons. I suppose it is quite important that I find you now rather than four hours from now. Which points to us having an adventurous four hours…" The Doctor trailed off. He stopped, then smiled, then tried to fight the smile back and look casual.
It was a laughably transparent effort.
Melody was becoming more and more aware of how much trusting this man frightened her. Was he doing something to her?
"That is, unless you want to go and meet your mom and dad instead."
Everything in Melody's head stopped.
"Curly hair?" Canton tried.
BANG
A small area of brick exploded into dust and fragments a foot from Canton's head.
"Shit," he said, dropping his revolver as a few of the more jagged shards of brick hit him a half-inch from his temple. He fell to one knee.
"Try again," Agent Lee said. Calmly.
Canton was in a hard place. A part of him, way in the back of his head, the part that wasn't panicking, sighed. He was getting supremely weary of being a supporting character in other people's drama. Somewhere behind Lee, the little boy began to sob silently.
"Professor of Archaeology speaks with an accent carries her own laser gun I once chased her off a roof and then picked her up from the same fall a week later runs with the Doctor," Canton said, all in one breath. Agent Lee smiled and lowered his gun.
"She's going to be a professor one day?" Lee said, perking up. He walked over and helped Canton up. His hand was clammy. "That is exciting."
Canton was about to reach down for his revolver, but Lee's foot beat him to it. Lee paused for a moment, considered Canton, then gleefully kicked the gun from the rooftop in an exaggerated motion.
"Am I to take it the real Agent Lee met with an unfortunate accident?" Canton took a shot in the dark. Lee turned back to Canton, unfazed.
"Oh, nothing so macabre," he replied. "Torchwood is an embarrassingly easy organization to infiltrate as long as you mention just how much you hate that pesky Doctor no one is supposed to know about in your interview." He smiled, pleased with himself. "No, I merely inserted myself into 1967 - corridor tech is a bit dodgy, it turns out - with some obviously forged credentials, applied for the job, and just lived up to the important dates for the mission. Not hard to do. Well, surviving that is. Boring couple of years. Don't know how you stand it."
"Not well," Canton said. Telling himself that Lee was nuts, but knowing better than to discount his story just because of that little fact. The boy was still crying, hugging his legs.
"Well, that's to be -" Lee started, then turned to the boy, suddenly furious, "Would you shut up?" The boy cried louder.
"Why do you want to know about River Song?" Canton asked, quickly. Lee turned back, his anger disappearing as quickly as it arose.
"Oh, no," Lee put his gun back in its holster, "You're not the one with the gun, Canton." He started kicking around the remains of what seemed to be aluminum siding.
"My fault though, I suppose. Over-explaining again. You're going to need to forgive me for that." He frowned at a particular piece of siding. Picked it up. Smelled it. Licked it. Smiled.
"You're going to need to forgive me for rather a lot, I'm afraid."
"I don't have parents," Melody said like a hard fact.
The Doctor watched her face. It was cold, hardened in a moment. The Doctor had seen men and women, centuries old, with looks that hard, but never on a child. Oh, River, he thought. What did they do to you?
"Everyone has parents." The Doctor smiled, trying to reassure. He couldn't make the smile reach his eyes, but he had a feeling it wouldn't have worked. "Even I have parents. Well, not so much anymore. But yours are alive and well."
Melody's stare hardened.
"Well, fine. Not alive or well. Not born yet, to be exact." The Doctor watched as Melody's mind began to chew that over. "You have grandparents alive and well, though. A whole four of them in this version of reality." Melody's face softened, just a bit. The timey-wimey stuff was working better than personal reassurances and smiles. That was interesting.
"What's my name?" Melody asked. Still cold, still hard, but with a light in her eyes that the Doctor recognized immediately.
It was the same look River got when she was being clever. It was also quite similar to the look Amy had had when she asked to come with him back at fish custard. The look of wonder she still got when seeing something new and alien, as if suddenly reveling in the vastness of possibilities the universe provided. He had never thought to look for similarities before but they were there in front of him. Even if the eyes and hair and bone structure were all wrong.
Some things ran deeper than that.
"Melody Pond," the Doctor said, not hesitating a second. He was winning her over. He could feel it. "Your mom is Amy Pond. Your dad is Rory Pond. Rory the Roman."
"My dad is a Roman?" The Doctor could almost feel the cogs of her mind at work. "My mom is from the future but my dad is from the past?" He decided to give it a push and she what she did with it.
"Well, your mom is from the future and your dad is from the future too. He's a nurse in the future. A Roman in the past. But not anymore except when he is." The Doctor stopped and watched. The hardness was gone. Just a smile and sharp, bright eyes. She was beginning to glow a bit around the edges. That was new. "You're from the future too."
"My dad was from the past in another version of reality. You said something about 'this version of reality'. I'm from this version of reality and my mother is from the future and my father was a nurse." She was pleased with herself. The Doctor had never seen a child take to the concept of time travel - let alone alternate realities - so naturally since the fall of Galifrey. Then Melody's expression grew dark, her glowing ceased.
She had let her guard down for just a moment, but Melody was self-aware again. The Doctor could see it in the way she held herself, like a weight has lowered itself back onto her. Her shoulders tensed and her stance was wearier. Her wonder was replaced with a colder intellect.
"Are you from the future too? From another version of reality?" Melody asked, frowning.
"Nothing so mundane," the Doctor replied. It was true. Let her work that out. "But maybe you can find out one day."
The Doctor snapped his fingers and the Tardis doors opened inwards, casting a warm light out onto the darkening rooftop. In the distance, someone screamed as glowing chalk numbers came alive.
"Can I tell Simon I'm going, first?" Melody asked.
"Who is Simon, and yes, if you're fast." The Doctor was reluctant to let Melody get away again but he couldn't take her against her will. "We can take the Tar-"
"Thanks!" Melody yelled, her relit glow shown as warmly and brightly as the TARDIS interior, "Be right back!"
Before the Doctor could react, Melody jumped impossibly high into the air, onto the TARDIS, off of the TARDOS, then sprinted to the edge of the roof, bounded to the next rooftop and off into the distance.
"Ah," said the Doctor, suddenly alone. He was stunned, but never speechless. "That is very not good."