I'm sorry it's been so long! In my (feeble) offense, there were technical difficulties with the website, and I got frustrated and... no update :( I really appreciate all your lovely reviews and favorites and things though! You guys are pretty great!
She doesn't manage to sleep much, woken up in the very early hours of the morning by a nightmare, and the baby, terrified. With her hands clenched over her stomach, River slips back out to the balcony and sinks down with her back against the closed door, staring up at the sky. She lets the memories that the fading, flickering lights draw up pull at her emotions, pouring the safety of his father's arms and smile and love into his frightened little mind until the panic slips back into sleep. She curls herself around him, hugging her knees to her chest. The sun rises slowly, the sunlight chases away the rainbow lights and begins defrosting the landscape. The trees unfurl their leaves, the layer of ice that had settled over everything in the frigid evening melting and turning to steam. It hovers in the air, catching the morning light and shimmering as it fades. It's beautiful, like a whole new planet being born on fast-forward right there in front of her.
There's a door buzzer on the balcony, so she knows when he shows up at her and Clara's room. He rings, and even though it's a nice, melodious sound, when he does it seven ties in quick succession, it loses it's charm. Gritting her teeth, River is determined to ignore him.
Of course it doesn't work-ignoring him rarely does-and a few minutes later the door behind her slides open. She tilts her head back to glare up at him and bumps against his knobby knees.
"It is really, really early," she grits out.
"Well, you're awake anyway," he breezily steps over her and she glares at his (attractive – not the point!) bum.
"You didn't know that when you rang the doorbell seven times."
"Well, Clara managed to sleep through it alright. And anyway, why didn't you answer, hhmm? You're just being difficult," he punctuates his accusation with his pointer finger, squatting down to poke her forehead.
River huffs at him, swatting at his offending finger and standing quickly, "Maybe I just don't like seeing you first thing in the morning." Which isn't really true, under different circumstances she's be very happy to see him first thing in the morning. Particularly if he happened to be naked.
But that really isn't a good thing to be thinking about at the moment.
"Did you want something?" she asks him.
"Yes, actually, I was thinking breakfast."
"Well you came to the wrong place for that, I haven't got anything to eat."
He looms into her personal space, glaring down at her, "Sometimes I can't tell if you're really as daft as you seem or if you're just trying to be obnoxious all the time."
"That would mean nothing to anyone. It's insane. Worse, it's stupid!"
"And you wonder why I didn't want to see you this morning!" she snaps at him, squeezing her hand in a fist at her side as she feels the sudden urge to slap him.
She hates this.
Something must show on her face, because as he steps back his eyes drop away from hers and his shoulders sag.
He sighs, shakes his head, and fixes his eyes at the wall off to her right shoulder.
"I just…. I thought, you know, we could have breakfast together."
"With Clara?"
"What? Yes, yes, of course with Clara. But she's asleep still, so actually not with Clara. Of course," he clears his throat, shuffles his feet awkwardly, "Because we really should let her sleep."
"We could wait until she wakes up, I'm sure she'll be hungry."
He pouts, "I'm hungry now, and anyway, we can just have breakfast again, with Clara, when she wakes up."
"Two breakfasts?"
He grins like a little boy and rubs his hands together, looking up to meet her eyes again, "Yes!"
She's never been able to resist that smile.
They're the only hotel guests awake, and the early morning staff casts grumpy, sleepy-eyed glances their way as they stroll into the lounge, bickering at a higher volume than is probably appropriate in a hotel full of sleeping guests. The Asgardian chairs are too high, and the Doctor has to give her a boost, which is all a bit ridiculous. It's a funny mix of trying not to shiver in delight at the warmth of his hands and a constant awareness of the ridiculousness of their situation, as he hoists her up and shoves helpfully at her dangling legs. She's still giggling like mad by the time she manages to actually sit on the chair, slumping back against the back rest, laughing as he starts his own clumsy ascent. River is pretty sure he manages to look even more ridiculous than she had, flailing his gangly limbs around a few times unsuccessfully before finally dragging himself up onto the seat.
He tries to look put-out as she laughs at him, but with his hair everywhere and bowtie askew it's even harder to take him seriously than usual.
"Well," he says, "You weren't much better."
"Oh I know!" she assures him, still laughing, "we need those step-stool things they have in the rooms."
"Apparently they don't hand those out this early in the morning."
"Maybe they would have if we weren't so loud."
"Now where's the fun in that?" He asks, and they're sitting there smiling at each other. She should fix that, but suddenly can't be bothered.
Their food comes, and the taste is familiar, and it really could be one of their dates, she thinks; him and her awake before everyone else, laughing and bickering over breakfast. The taste is strange, with her new taste buds though. She eagerly eats a fruit she'd always loved, and the taste is so terrible on her new tongue that she actually spits it out on her plate. Well, she tries to spit it out on her plate, what actually happens is that she misses her plate, and the offending, half-chewed slice of fruit ends up on the Doctor's plate.
He looks disgusted for a moment, and then he looks delighted, "Your face was hilarious! And you spit your food across the table!"
"Well it tastes awful!"
"Really? The last person I came here with loved them," he says, offhandedly almost, prodding her half-chewed fruit slice away from his own food.
He says it so casually. It feels like a splash of cold water across her face.
"She must have been crazy."
He looks up at her slowly, "Yeah," he says, "she was a bit."
Realizing her mistake she tries to shrug, casually, "Clara mentioned your tendency to pick up women to travel around with."
"Luck of the draw," he mutters, unconvincingly.
They're no longer alone, guests trickling in and out around them, and before she knows it they've jumped into a game of, "name that Asgardian."
The Doctor is telling her what a species-ist she is for naming them all "Harry" and "Harriet" when Clara finds them.
"Ha! What do you mean my names don't reflect who they are as individuals? You're just calling them after random British monarchs!"
"Not true! I am calling them after my favorite British monarchs, I'm honoring them!"
River shakes her head at him, remembering a queen with a gun in an art gallery, "Oh really? Is that why you've called all the females 'Elizabeth'?"
"Yes, but not the same Elizabeth! I'm numbering them. The more attractive one's get named after my favorites of the Elizabeths."
"You've already gotten to 13! And how can you even tell which of them are attractive and which aren't?"
"There you go being species-ist again," he flicks her long abandoned fruit slice at her, "Keep that up and you'll get us kicked out of here. Done that once, and let me tell you, you don't want to know where the legend of Thor's hammer really came from."
"Actually, I'm a bit keen to know," Clara pipes up from next to their table. River jumps, turning to face her in surprise. She looks even smaller than usual against the backdrop of towering furniture.
"If food fighting's the worst you two have come to, I'm relieved. I was half-expecting a blood bath."
"Clara!" says the Doctor, and River feels better at the surprise in his voice too, at least she wasn't the only one taken by surprise, "You found us!"
"Mostly by accident, I was just following the smell of food. And bickering."
"I'm so sorry Clara, I meant to be back by the time you woke up," River tells her, genuinely regretful.
"Oh it's alright, you were probably starving waiting for me to wake up for so long," River blinks, confused, "It's almost lunch time, I think, at least as far as I can tell," Clara finishes, gesturing to her watch.
River looks down at her own watch, shocked, then looks up at the clock hanging on the wall (weird and oblong, and set for 14 hours instead of 12, but she manages to make sense of it).
Four hours. Their breakfast had stretched out over four hours.
She catches the Doctor's eyes over the table. How had that happened?
"Yeah," the Doctor says, still looking at her, "Mo looked like she might faint from hunger when she came and found me in my room. I tried to convince her to wait for you, but she just couldn't do it. She said something about having two lunches if necessary," he winks at her, and she rolls her eyes at him but runs with it.
The staff bring Clara a chair (and a stool, apparently they do hand those out later in the day, or maybe Clara is simply less obnoxious than they had been) and as she joins them at the table and starts into her lunch, she looks none the worse for wear. She eats enough to feed a small army though.
"So, about the real story of Thor's hammer," Clara says a little while later, dropping her napkin onto her cleared plate.
"You really don't want to know," The Doctor assures her, and River hides her grin in her drink.
"I do though, I'm really curious. Asgard is from Norse mythology, why is it a planet inhabited by talking hairy people?"
"They are hairy, aren't they," River agrees, pointedly, earning her a glare from the Doctor.
Clara looks between them bemusedly.
"Bit of a long story. How about a tour then?" the Doctor asks, "it's a really nice place in the daytime, Asgard, how about it?"
"A tour? We're stranded." River points out, and really, she could do without more time on this all too familiar planet. His overly-dramatic, archaeologically-incorrect re-telling of the planet's history isn't really something she's looking forward to either.
"We are not stranded, Mo. Our transportation just decided to stop cooperating for an unknown period of time."
"Sounds like a plane crash," Clara says, cheekily.
"She has not crashed, she's simply decided not to fly. We'll be fine. And in the meantime, Asgard!"
And so River finds herself in the Asgardian national museum, standing, once again, over a miniscule display about primitive earthlings accidentally stowing away on an Asgardian ship, and returning to their own planet under the impression that they'd been to the home of the gods.
"Of course, they're leaving out the bit about who took that lot of Vikings back to earth," the Doctor preens.
"Why am I not surprised?" says Clara. She nudges River with her elbow, "It was him, by the way. You can tell by that smug little smirk on his face."
In truth, he couldn't have done it without her. He would have been be-headed by the leader of the little Viking pack if she hadn't been there watching his back. Of course, he doesn't mention that part of the story.
She glares at him, and he has the audacity to look confused.
"What?" he asks her, "not a fan of Vikings?"
"No, I just think you could've straightened things out for them, you know, explained to them that they hadn't gone to heaven and met the gods."
"Well how do you know I didn'ttry?"
He hadn't tried. Actually, he'd tried to convince them that River herself was some sort of goddess queen who had kidnapped him to be her love-slave. By some miracle that particular part of the legend hadn't made it past a few generations.
"You didn't," she says, flatly, moving on to peer at other, far more interesting displays.
He claims credit for quite a few other things in the museum, and by the time they finally leave she's so frustrated with the strain of biting her own tongue, she's well and truly cross with him.
When they finally make it back the Tardis the door swings open in greeting, and the ship hums softly in the back of River's head. She shoves all of her frustration back at her, glaring at the mockingly open doorway as Clara and the Doctor cheerfully prance inside. She pulls up all of her worst memories of the day (Being with the Doctor on any sort of public transportation was never a good idea) and pouring them all into the smug presence settling against the back of her skull.
"There now, you see? I told you it would be fine," the Doctor tells Clara, patting the doorframe as they pass through.
River hesitates for a moment before joining them. It's just getting to that time of day when the shadows start to grow long. Underneath the tree, the spot where their picnic blanket had left a mark the day before is clear. It feels strangely empty, like there should be something there, some small sign that something important had happened right there under the gently curling leaves.
But then, she thinks as she turns away, it was only a picnic, really.