fic: what the dormouse said (doctor who)
Title: What The Dormouse Said
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: G
Characters/Pairings: Doctor/River
Summary: Because stories are not lies.
AN: This was written for Different Songs: an AU Challenge at spoiler_song. (Third picture from the bottom provided inspiration, yo.)
What The Dormouse Said
Sometimes River wonders if the Doctor is a figment of her imagination.
(She knows which parts of her own life are fiction; she wrote most of them herself then gave them to an American who published them in Galaxy magazine, circa 1959. There are copies in the Library now. She likes the illustrations.)
She’s always told herself stories, about who she is and what she’s done and what’s real and what’s not, and she knows she has memories of impossible things: diving through a star’s corona, her sister’s wedding to a shimmer of smoke, listening to a cloister bell chime out the dying breaths of an ancient world.
(It’s worse than that: the memories change. Sometimes she can feel them, wriggling around her mind like silver fish. There is now and there is then and there is something in-between that is so very, very quiet it can’t possibly be screaming.)
She collects the Doctor’s names and monikers, his pseudonyms and lies. She collects stories. In another universe, he was Merlin, frozen in the ice caves; in an unhappened life he was a lawyer taut with rage and the intolerability of his own half-true existence. She has seen the Doctor’s first and true name spelt out in starlight and she said it, once, a very, very long time ago. She doesn’t remember what happened afterwards and she is certain she doesn’t want to.
Her own collection of identities is small but sufficient. There is River Song and there is ******, and she is always very careful to remember which is which.
There was a swordfight once, with a madman in the highlands of Scotland, (1764, wasn’t it? Or earlier? Were there wolves?) and River lost. The madman’s sword sank through her chest with a horrible ease and she laughed as she choked on her own gaudy red blood; she spat it in his face and collapsed.
When she woke up she was alone and the wound was gone. A thick fog had risen on the moor and her skin was cold with condensation.
(River isn’t sure if it was the Doctor who killed her, isn’t certain, but since when did that really matter? She tries to sketch the madman’s face in her diary but the lines blur and smudge into a shapeless nothingness that reminds her of her dreams.)
It wasn’t the first death she’d woken from. She’s died many times, more than enough for her not to be afraid anymore. It’s not something she’s proud of; it’s something that sits within her, heavy and poisonous as lead. Maybe she can’t die because she doesn’t exist either. She sees how the Doctor looks at her and thinks, sometimes and strangely, that they created each other.
(There are so many questions she’d like to ask, but she’s afraid the answers will change.)
Gallifrey, she knows, is the name of the largest diamond in the House of Remembrance’s collection of crown jewels. She won it in a game of poker, and lost it in the Doctor’s TARDIS. Sometimes she thinks the ship stole it, sometimes she thinks he did. Stole it, and grew a world from it, a people, a childhood, a past.
(She invented him; she can’t tell him that, what if he doesn’t believe her? What if he unmakes her? Why make him so unhappy? Why make his world burn?
There is something she’s forgotten.)
Once she is dead for years, centuries, and when she comes back, the universe is wrong. Or she is. She doesn’t cry; there’s no sadness, no pain, no loss, but there should be, oh, she knows that there should be.
River resolves to be careful. There’s too much she’s not afraid of.
It’s easier when the Doctor’s there. River can look at him and know precisely who she is. He’s comfortable with change and wears many skins, many stories. He looks at her and she knows that there is a part of her that is hers alone and it is immutable and it is true.
(There are contradictions in the narrative; someone has been doing a great deal of rewriting.)
Everything that exists should be as real as everything else.
(She should not think of herself as a cat in a box. But it’s alright, because it’s not just her in here, it’s a whole universe.
And outside,
something
looks in
It gets closer when she sleeps.)
There is a story and there is a lie and she is somewhere in-between.
Nothing has changed.
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: G
Characters/Pairings: Doctor/River
Summary: Because stories are not lies.
AN: This was written for Different Songs: an AU Challenge at spoiler_song. (Third picture from the bottom provided inspiration, yo.)
What The Dormouse Said
Sometimes River wonders if the Doctor is a figment of her imagination.
(She knows which parts of her own life are fiction; she wrote most of them herself then gave them to an American who published them in Galaxy magazine, circa 1959. There are copies in the Library now. She likes the illustrations.)
She’s always told herself stories, about who she is and what she’s done and what’s real and what’s not, and she knows she has memories of impossible things: diving through a star’s corona, her sister’s wedding to a shimmer of smoke, listening to a cloister bell chime out the dying breaths of an ancient world.
(It’s worse than that: the memories change. Sometimes she can feel them, wriggling around her mind like silver fish. There is now and there is then and there is something in-between that is so very, very quiet it can’t possibly be screaming.)
She collects the Doctor’s names and monikers, his pseudonyms and lies. She collects stories. In another universe, he was Merlin, frozen in the ice caves; in an unhappened life he was a lawyer taut with rage and the intolerability of his own half-true existence. She has seen the Doctor’s first and true name spelt out in starlight and she said it, once, a very, very long time ago. She doesn’t remember what happened afterwards and she is certain she doesn’t want to.
Her own collection of identities is small but sufficient. There is River Song and there is ******, and she is always very careful to remember which is which.
There was a swordfight once, with a madman in the highlands of Scotland, (1764, wasn’t it? Or earlier? Were there wolves?) and River lost. The madman’s sword sank through her chest with a horrible ease and she laughed as she choked on her own gaudy red blood; she spat it in his face and collapsed.
When she woke up she was alone and the wound was gone. A thick fog had risen on the moor and her skin was cold with condensation.
(River isn’t sure if it was the Doctor who killed her, isn’t certain, but since when did that really matter? She tries to sketch the madman’s face in her diary but the lines blur and smudge into a shapeless nothingness that reminds her of her dreams.)
It wasn’t the first death she’d woken from. She’s died many times, more than enough for her not to be afraid anymore. It’s not something she’s proud of; it’s something that sits within her, heavy and poisonous as lead. Maybe she can’t die because she doesn’t exist either. She sees how the Doctor looks at her and thinks, sometimes and strangely, that they created each other.
(There are so many questions she’d like to ask, but she’s afraid the answers will change.)
Gallifrey, she knows, is the name of the largest diamond in the House of Remembrance’s collection of crown jewels. She won it in a game of poker, and lost it in the Doctor’s TARDIS. Sometimes she thinks the ship stole it, sometimes she thinks he did. Stole it, and grew a world from it, a people, a childhood, a past.
(She invented him; she can’t tell him that, what if he doesn’t believe her? What if he unmakes her? Why make him so unhappy? Why make his world burn?
There is something she’s forgotten.)
Once she is dead for years, centuries, and when she comes back, the universe is wrong. Or she is. She doesn’t cry; there’s no sadness, no pain, no loss, but there should be, oh, she knows that there should be.
River resolves to be careful. There’s too much she’s not afraid of.
It’s easier when the Doctor’s there. River can look at him and know precisely who she is. He’s comfortable with change and wears many skins, many stories. He looks at her and she knows that there is a part of her that is hers alone and it is immutable and it is true.
(There are contradictions in the narrative; someone has been doing a great deal of rewriting.)
Everything that exists should be as real as everything else.
(She should not think of herself as a cat in a box. But it’s alright, because it’s not just her in here, it’s a whole universe.
And outside,
something
looks in
It gets closer when she sleeps.)
There is a story and there is a lie and she is somewhere in-between.
Nothing has changed.