Entry tags:

doctor who, fic, water music

Fic: Water Music (3/?)
Title: Water Music
Author: azriona
Rating: PG, so far
Spoilers: Big ones for Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead. Compliant with Journey’s End, but if you haven’t seen it, you won’t be spoiled.
Betas: runriggers and jlrpuck

Summary: The Doctor meets River Song again...and again...and again.

Chapters One ~ Two

Chapter Three


“Oh, Alice, don’t you worry about it,” grumbled Alice to herself as she stormed through the TARDIS corridor, carrying random spare parts in her arms. “Just push the lever like a good little girl, and I’ll answer all your questions when we land.”

The Doctor followed her, picking up the bits of wires, bolts and conduits that fell from Alice’s arms. Since Alice was angry, and thus not paying attention, this meant that he was practically crawling behind her in order to keep any vitally important piece from being left behind. “Alice,” he interrupted wearily, but Alice was having none of it.

“Only we never actually landed, did we!” Alice shouted over her shoulder. Another wire fell from her arms, but Alice (if she noticed at all) did not stop to pick it up. “We’ve been floating in the Vortex for a week, because someone doesn’t want to tell a story!”

“It’s not my fault the temporal relay had a short-circuit!”

“Then why don’t you just tell me already?”

“We haven’t landed yet!”

“Argh!” screamed Alice in frustration, tossing her arms out. The air was suddenly filled with wires, nuts, bolts, a hacksaw, several fuel modulators, half a dozen cellular transistors, two sets of hockney-gazortiums, and worst of all – the fantastically delicate and extremely rare spare temporal orb.

“OI!”

The Doctor slid to the ground, barely catching the orb before it crashed to the floor. He glared up at Alice, who stood over him with arms crossed.

“Bad form!” he snapped at her, and she leaned over, her eyes narrowing.

“All week, it’s been stupid little hints. ‘Oh, she’s from my past, Alice. Or maybe my future, hard to keep track.’ ” Alice mocked him mercilessly – which really, was not that much different from a regular day, but this time, this subject, it stung.

The Doctor sighed, and knocked his head against the floor. It almost felt good.

“It’s like you don’t even trust me with the whole story, you have to give it to me in hints. ‘Well, Alice, hard to say when I met her. Did I meet her first on Nebulon? She didn’t look afraid, maybe that wasn’t the first time she met me. Although, strictly speaking, I should say it wasn’t the first time I met her.’ ”

He hit his forehead again, experimentally. No, actually, that rather hurt.

“ ‘Of course, Alice, I never expected to meet her in a library, of all places.’ ”

“Alice.”

“ ‘But then, she mentioned something about a picnic.’ ”

“Alice?”

“ ‘Oh, la la la, don’t mind me, Alice, I’m just the Doctor, I’m going to drop hints and drive you spare because you weren’t paying attention to the semantics!’ ”

“ALICE!”

The corridor fell silent. “Yes, Doctor?” replied Alice, very sweetly.

The Doctor pushed himself off the floor, careful to hold the orb in his hand. “Alice, I’m going to hand you the space-temporal orb now.”

Alice’s eyes went wide. “Ah – are you sure? I’m still angry. I could throw it at the wall.”

“I know.”

Alice glanced at the orb, and then again at the Doctor. “That’s the last orb on the TARDIS. If I break it, it’ll take us five weeks instead of three hours to get to Kespa to buy a new one.”

“Well, closer to six, but yeah, that’s the idea.”

“And you’re just gonna give it to me.”

“Because against my better judgment and certainly against any amount of self-control you’ve shown so far, I do actually trust you, Alice,” said the Doctor, putting the orb in her hand and wrapping her fingers around it. “I trust you with the story, I trust you with the TARDIS key, and moreover, I trust you to toss that orb against the wall if by the end of the next hour I haven’t explained the entire story to your liking. Will that do?”

Alice stared at the orb, surprised how heavy it suddenly was. She gripped it with both hands, feeling the warmth from her skin intensify as the clear orb grew opaque and faintly blue.

“I thought the only reason you’d promised to tell me anything was to make me push the lever.”

“The thought crossed my mind, yeah,” he said dryly. “Don’t suppose we could do this with tea, could we?”

“Tea,” agreed Alice, and holding the orb carefully in front of her, desperate not to trip, she followed the Doctor to the galley.

*

The TARDIS galley was not big enough to be called a kitchen, even if kitchens on ships were called kitchens, which they were not. This had been one of the very first lectures the Doctor had given Alice upon her arrival, and it was the last lecture Alice had ever listened to in its entirety. Afterwards, she tended to tune him out approximately thirty words in, because by then she’d figured out what he was talking about. It was very easy to tell when he was wrapping things up, because the vein on the back of his neck, just below his ear, would start to throb.

As much as Alice disliked lectures, she loved the way he ended them. Whether it was about the essential difference between matter and anti-matter, or the raison du jour that the bad guy would not win the day, Alice loved a good conclusion.

Normally, Alice made the tea; water was one of the few things she couldn’t burn. But since she held the orb in her hands, it was the Doctor who set the water to boil, pulled out the tea leaves, prepared the pot, and placed their cups on the table where Alice sat, eyes firmly focused on the orb.

“I’m holding time and space in the palm of my hands,” she said, full of wonder, and the Doctor chuckled.

“Not quite. Just one of the conduits.”

“Yeah, but we install this puppy, and rev up the engines – and I will have held the part that holds all of time and space in the palm of my hands. Same thing.”

“Not really.”

“Could you let me be amazed for at least half a minute, please?”

The Doctor grinned and put the milk and sugar on the table. “Eventually, Alice, I’ll need to actually install the orb.”

Alice sighed, and pulled her eyes away from it. The Doctor’s grin was almost cocky. She almost hated to ask anything at all – there couldn’t be any answer she wanted to know that could possibly allow the grin remain on his face.

“Who was she?”

Sure enough, the grin faded, but instead of being replaced by the lost, sad expression Alice feared, the Doctor grew contemplative. He sat on the chair opposite her and reached for the sugar bowl. “I’m not sure,” he replied thoughtfully while he spooned sugar into his empty cup. “That is – I think I know, but it’s been fifteen years, and I’ve had nothing but time to think about it.”

“Think about what?”

“River Song, of course.”

“Where’s that?”

“Not where. Who. The girl in the library, that’s her name.”

“So, you met her when she was a baby?”

“No, she was grown then. Much older. Don’t know how old, actually – late thirties? Forties?”

Alice sighed, somewhat impatiently. “Doctor....”

He at least had the courtesy to look a bit guilty. “Not my fault if you can’t ask questions that have reasonable answers.”

Alice glared and poured her tea, setting the pot back on the table with a thump in clear refusal to pour it for him. When she next poured in the milk, it was in clear defiance.

“Two years and you still can’t prepare tea properly, can you?”

Alice added a spoonful of sugar just to spite him. “Okay. You met her fifteen years ago, except she was thirty years older. That right?”

“Yes.”

Alice frowned and began to think. Fifteen years ago...Alice knew quite a few of the stories, both beginning and end, not all of which she’d heard from the Doctor himself. Actually, none of the important stories were from the Doctor. Alice had the feeling that this was probably one of the more important ones to be told. “Fifteen years...you were with Jack?”

“They always ask about Jack first – why do they always ask about Jack first?” sighed the Doctor. “Never should have introduced you to him.”

“I’m rather glad you did, actually.” Especially since most of the stories came from him.

“I was with Donna.”

“Oh, Donna.” There weren’t many stories about Donna – not because there weren’t many Donna stories, but because they were among those that hurt him to tell. Donna was one of the few companions Alice would have liked to meet – and one of the least likely for whom she’d have the opportunity. There were few companions whose stories hurt the Doctor worse than Donna’s – but Alice knew most of those anyway.

Alice set the orb carefully in her lap, keeping one hand on the sphere, and reached for her tea. If the Doctor had been with Donna, then it would have been before Mutter’s Spiral, and Davros, and – well. Alice wondered why the Doctor didn’t seem the least bit hesitant to tell her this particular story. She’d expected more resistance from him, and he looked like he was almost comfortable.

“How’d you meet her? The first time, I mean, with Donna.”

The Doctor picked up his tea and looked into the cup; Alice watched him formulate his answer. “I...there was a message, on the psychic paper, for me to go The Library. It’s a planet – locked now, you can’t go there anymore. Great planet filled with books, every book in the world. She was there on an expedition, leading it, really. And – she knew me. I hadn’t met her before, but she knew me.”

“She’d met you, you hadn’t met her,” repeated Alice, remembering his earlier words. “Well, you have to think that would happen occasionally.”

“Not that often.”

“Only because you never go anywhere twice.”

“That’s not true, either.”

“Oh, please. I’ve wanted to go back to that Turkish restaurant opposite the Globe theatre for months now and you keep landing us in Boston.”

“I’ve learned through experience,” he said dryly.

“So you met her at The Library. And she said she knew you, and I imagine she figured out right quick that you didn’t know her—"

“Who’s telling this story?”

Alice set down her tea and waved him away. “Brilliant mind at work here. I’ll bet she clammed right up when she realized you didn’t know her yet.”

“She did,” said the Doctor, almost sour, and Alice grinned. “Worse too, she had a diary with her. I had the impression she’d written about all the time we’d spent together. She used it to try to figure out where I was in our story.”

“How’s that worse?”

“She wouldn’t let me look in it.”

“Of course not,” said Alice. “Not safe to know your own future, makes you cocky.” She grinned. “Well, in your case—"

“Alice,” he warned.

“Miss River Song—"

“Professor.”

“Ooo, Professor! Leave it to you to find a clever one. Professor River Song, professional treasure hunter—"

“Archaeologist.”

“Same job, different treasure. Professor River Song, archaeologist, meets the Doctor in an abandoned Library—“

“The Library.”

Alice lifted up the orb in one hand. The Doctor sighed and slumped in his chair.

“So you’ve been waiting fifteen years to see her again?”

“Yes.”

Alice set the orb back in her lap.

“And you saw her in the university’s library.”

“Yes.”

“Ironic.”

“Isn’t it?”

“What was she like?”

The Doctor’s gaze turned upward while he remembered. “She was – headstrong. Very stubborn. When she decided on a course of action, she took it. She didn’t seem to care what anyone thought of her – including me. And she didn’t mind telling anyone what she thought of them – including me.”

“Was she pretty?”

The Doctor grinned. “You saw her. She was ginger.”

“I only got a glimpse of Miss Teenage Beauty Queen, that’s not enough to tell me what she’s like older. Maybe she turns into a scraggly old hag.”

“She’s not a scraggly old hag. And she called me ‘Pretty Boy’.”

Alice laughed. “Oh, I like that.”

He shook his finger at her. “Don’t you dare.”

“Shouldn’t have told me then! You don’t have to wait thirty years to see her again, do you?”

“I don’t think so – she gave the impression we’d been seeing each other for a very long time. Years.”

Alice swung her legs on the chair, the grin creeping onto her face. “You said she was what, forty or something, when you met her first? Let’s go find her, and tell her you’ve met her again, first time. Bet she’ll laugh.”

But the Doctor’s face darkened, and he dropped another spoonful of sugar into his tea. “We can’t.”

Alice’s gut reaction was probably not the best response, but it slipped out before she could stop herself. “Can’t? Damn the time lines, Doctor, let’s go.”

“She was going to die, Alice!” The Doctor’s voice was harsh, more so than Alice had ever heard it, and she froze for a moment. Her fingers instinctively closed on the orb, and the pulsing warmth kept her steady. The Doctor clenched his fists, and Alice swallowed, thinking if she wasn’t very careful, he might leave the galley entirely, never mind shattered temporal spheres.

He’d leave her to clean up the mess, too.

Alice tried to keep her voice calm and even, and very quiet. “What happened?"

“She—" He choked, just a bit, but smoothly turned it into a cough. “Everyone was trapped, and we needed extra memory to save them. I was going to – but she knocked me out, and tied me up, and did it herself. And that was it.”

Alice’s teacup made a slow descent to the table. She heard her heart pounding in her ears, and every last bit of jocularity flowed out of her like she’d slashed her wrists. “Oh. I – I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“I thought she had died – except between her now and my later, I figured out a way. I saved her. She’s still in The Library. She can never leave. She isn’t alive – but she’s saved.”

Alice didn’t quite understand it, but she supposed it didn’t much matter. There was something else nagging at her.

“So the first time you saw her was the last time she saw you.”

He nodded, spinning his cup in circles. Alice swallowed. “But...you see her again, right? Between your now and her then?”

“She said as much, yeah.”

“So she’s out there, somewhere. She’s waiting for you. All we have to do is find her. When do you see her next?”

He shrugged. “No idea.”

Alice frowned. It wasn’t the Melancholy, she didn’t think – those were always quick to start, and he seemed to be slipping into whatever this was at a very slow and steady pace. Alice decided to stop him, and stood up, careful to catch the orb before it fell from her lap to the floor.

“Well, come on, then. You said she had a diary, let’s go look it in.”

The Doctor glanced up at her. “I don’t have the diary, Alice.”

Alice lifted the orb in one hand. “You what?”

“I don’t have the diary. I left it in The Library.”

“The Library. The locked Library.”

“Yeah.” There was an edge to his voice that didn’t usually pop up in his Melancholies. Alice recognized it and pounced.

“What are you, stupid? How did you expect to know when you’d see her again?”

“I don’t know!” he yelled back, and Alice felt a surge of triumph. “I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly!”

“Well, we’ll just have to go back and get it, won’t we?” argued Alice, tucking the orb in her arms. “Drink your tea, Time Lord, we’ve got a temporal circuit to fix.”

“I can’t look in the diary, Alice – I can’t know what’s going to happen to me.”

“Who said anything about you looking in the diary? There’s two of us, aren’t there?” Alice was halfway down the corridor before she realized the Doctor had stopped in the galley doorway. She sighed and walked back to him. “Doctor, do you want to know when you see River Song next or don’t you?”

It took a few tries before the word came out. “Yes.”

“Then allons-y already. Time’s a-wastin’.”

Alice turned back down the corridor with a grin, and a few minutes later, heard the Doctor race after her, scrambling to pick up the bits and pieces he’d need to fix the TARDIS as he went.

*

The Doctor’s expression wasn’t one Alice had seen before – not all that unusual, as he seemed to have a thousand of them – but this one was particularly curious. He looked as if he’d been sucking on a lemon while watching a humpback whale balance a elephant on its tail.

The elephant was probably singing the full score to Evita. Alice couldn’t be sure.

“What’s the plan, Doc?” she asked him once the TARDIS landed. Alice bounced from foot to foot, filled with excitement. The plan was dangerous and tricky, and could possibly end very very badly. Alice couldn’t wait.

“This may very well be the stupidest thing I’ve ever been about to do,” he grumbled in response. “Wait – there was the time with a shaver and a bottle of – no. This is definitely much worse.”

“Congratulations. Will I get to see Donna?”

“Might do, she was looking around for Lee. Tell her you haven’t seen him and move on.”

“I know.”

“If you see me don’t pay any attention. Don’t look at me. Don’t not look at me, but no sly looks or winks or—"

“I know!”

The Doctor’s glance was stern. “I mean it, Alice. You can’t say so much as a word. No matter how tempting it is. Not. A. Word. About—"

Alice held her breath, wondering if he’d actually say her name. He never had, not once. It was one of the reasons she was grateful for Jack Harkness.

“Anything,” concluded the Doctor lamely, almost choking on it. Alice nodded, trying to ignore the lump in her throat. Some things, she thought, River Song was not going to be able to cure.

Stupid, really. She might have wanted to say something to the younger Doctor. She had even thought of it herself, in the giddy first realization that the Doctor was actually going to let her go through with the mad plan. But really, Alice knew better. It wouldn’t have done any good. Two visits from his future, all in one day? He wouldn’t have believed it.

“Ready?” asked the Doctor, and Alice nodded. “We aren’t far from where I left the diary – two floors down, three balconies to the left. I don’t dare get closer. Don’t let anyone see you take it. Try not to speak to anyone, either. If the screwdriver is still on the diary, wait around the corner because I’m coming back for it. And whatever you do, Alice, you mustn’t—"

”I know,” said Alice impatiently. “Don’t destroy the time lines.”

“I was going to say don’t wander off, but that’s a good one, too.”

Alice grinned and turned to leave the TARDIS, but the Doctor caught her elbow and held her back.

“Alice—"

“Doctor,” replied Alice, matching his uncertain tone in a far more mocking way.

He hesitated. Alice wondered what he wanted to say, and waited.

“Go on,” he finally said, and let her go.

Alice didn’t stop to look around her; she went straight to the stairwell opposite the TARDIS doors. She flew down them so quickly, her feet barely touched the steps, and when she popped out two floors down, she spun to the left and ran. The balconies were long, slightly curved, and it surprised Alice how good it felt to run. There was something different about running toward something, instead of away. Particularly when no one was chasing her. When she stopped traveling with the Doctor, she might have to take it up for fun.

Alice slowed as she reached the third balcony, barely even gasping for breath, and pondered the “when”. Of course, she had no real plans to stop seeing the world, not really. She never meant it when she threatened to leave him for good, and he knew it. But someday, Alice knew, she’d stop. Maybe she’d decide to stay somewhere, or he would make the decision for her. The Doctor didn’t keep his companions forever, not even close.

And since Alice knew she had little chance of being the first to break what was an unofficial TARDIS Rule, she’d long since accepted it. She just didn’t like to dwell on it.

The diary waited on the balcony ledge, sans screwdriver, just as the Doctor said it would. The balcony was empty – Alice couldn’t even hear anyone nearby. Alice’s footsteps echoed as she approached, and for a moment she looked over The Library, stretching to the horizon in gold and grey tones. A vast planet filled with nothing but books – every word ever written and recorded, the Doctor said, here forever.

Something moved at the corner of her vision; Alice glanced behind her, saw nothing, and walked to the balcony ledge.

Funny, she thought as she rested her hand on the diary, that it looked like the TARDIS. It was old, worn, nearly torn in spots, and some of the pages looked like they’d been pulled out of another journal and shoved in as an afterthought. Alice picked up the book, surprised at its heft. She thought she heard something behind her, and looked around again.

Nothing.

A kiosk of some sort waited on the far end of the balcony; Alice walked over to give it a closer look. There were a series of numbers flashing, steadily going down – given what the Doctor had explained, Alice assumed it was the survivors, heading home at last. A hundred years late, of course – she wondered how they managed, with their families and friends and everything they’d known being dead and gone and forgotten.

Alice was about to turn away from the kiosk when something occurred to her. She set the diary down on the ledge again and went back to the kiosk. It took a few tries before she was able to find the search function, and once the text box opened, she began typing.

Search Term: River Song.

Alice waited as the hourglass on the screen began to turn. It didn’t take long.

Hello?


Jump to Chapter Four