And the rest of the story...
***
Chapter 2/2
He scrambles to his feet, holds his hands up in front of his face, and looks at them in disbelief. "What have you done?" he yells.
I've meddled,
she thinks, but she tells him, "What you should have done for yourself."
His first face had been a kind one, even when relaxed in near-death. The face he wears now is as stark and stony as his thoughts -- all bony prominences and jagged angles over a core of pure granite. His eyes glitter menacingly and his voice is hard and rough as he advances on her. "You. Had. No. Right."
"You came here," she insists. "Your ship called me."
"And I told you to let me go."
She tries to touch him again, but his mind is quicksilver now--hard, slippery, fluid beneath her touch.
"Don't do that again."
He's looming over her now and River knows that no one in the 'verse as she knows it can possibly be a threat to her while unarmed, but she retreats anyway, overwhelmed by his intensity. When her hip bumps the console she puts a hand on it to steady herself, but pulls it back at the sensation of wetness. She looks dumbly at the ichor staining her palm and the Doctor takes her hand with surprising gentleness.
"I'm sorry," he says, "I didn't realize…"and his gentle words surprise her until she realizes that the Doctor isn't talking to her. He releases her hand and turns his attention to the console, turning wheels, pushing buttons, then finally giving it a thump with his fist. A column in the center of the console pistons up and down and the machine begins to make a sickly wheezing noise.
"Might want to hang on," he tells her. River's been traveling in space long enough to know that it's wise to belt in first and ask questions later, but there aren't even any chairs, much less seat belts, so she grabs the railing around the console and wraps her arms firmly around it. A second later, the room gives a mighty heave that nearly causes her to lose her grip. The Doctor is thrown hard against the console, but he's still standing--monitoring gauges and adjusting the controls. The control room continues to pitch and spin wildly like a ship on a storm-swept sea and the TARDIS
falls, flies, soars like a leaf on the wind
while River wonders how much her mind and body can take before she simply flies apart.
"Come on, come on," the Doctor's voice is encouraging. "Get us home, and I'll do the rest." After several more minutes of heaving and tumbling, they finally stop with a bone-jarring thump and the room is still and quiet once more.
River waits for a few more minutes before relaxing her grip on the railing and standing cautiously. The Doctor studiously ignores her as he opens panels and pulls out wiring, muttering to himself the whole time. River crosses to the door. She knows that Serenity isn't out there anymore, but she wonders about what she'll find in its place.
The doors swing inward at her thought, and River steps onto the surface of a barren planet. They've landed on a rocky mesa and, although she can see for miles and miles in every direction, there's nothing to catch her eye and nothing to catch her mind. She can feel something vaguely like an emotional residue that tells her that this planet was home to millions, if not billions, of beings. But it's even worse than Miranda, now. There's no life here at all -- no animals, no birds, not even insects. The sun--larger than Earth's--hangs low in the sky and the temperature drops a little as the light begins to fail. The swirling dust motes in the air turn the sun's dying rays into a dull scarlet color that stains the boulders and rocks and it looks like
the world is soaked in blood.
"This is Gallifrey." A voice startles her out of her reverie. "It was my home."
When River turns, she sees the Doctor--standing on a dead planet in a dead man's clothes--haloed in the light from a dying sun. She wants to weep for him, but she ran out of tears a long time ago.
"What happened?" she asks.
"You didn't see enough to understand, then?" He looks relieved.
"No. I saw lots of things, but they didn't make much sense."
"Good. You've got quite a future ahead of you, River Tam, but inventing time travel isn't supposed to be part of it."
"Time travel?" Some of the things she saw in the Doctor's mind suddenly begin to take on new meaning. "How do you know my name?"
"Let's just say that history will remember you fondly." The Doctor cups her face in his hand and captures her eyes with his own. "And bear in mind that if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
Unnerved, River turns away from him. She's not comfortable with the thought of anyone seeing inside her. The more they know, the more they fear, and the more they think of her as a freak. "Why did we come here, Doctor?"
"The TARDIS was born here, so I hoped that she'd be able to find her way home." He pats the outside of the box lovingly. "She needs the energy from a dimensional rift to heal and to complete the repairs. And there's a huge one here now, thanks to the Time War."
A Time War…
She digests the thought. "What happened after your people lost?"
"But we didn't." He grins broadly, showing a mouthful of white, even teeth. "We won!" He throws his head back and laughs heartily and continuously until tears stream from his eyes. River--who has seen and endured more horror in her few years than most people see in a lifetime--feels her skin crawl.
"I'm sorry," she says as she edges back inside the TARDIS. She knows the words will never be enough.
I'm sorry about your people and your planet and about what happened to you. But I'm still not sorry for what I did.
***
River spends the next few days exploring while the Doctor fixes and fusses with his instruments. She's found a superb playmate in the now-healing TARDIS, who rearranges rooms and hallways for her with abandon, constantly challenging River to figure out where she is. The Doctor finally finishes tinkering with the controls and disappears for a time, but when he walks in on her while she's poring through the books in his library, she sees a few obvious changes. He's washed the blood from his new body and found new clothes: dark pants and sweater, black, rugged boots, and a black jacket. It's all dark, somber, and colorless. He mourns.
"We're ready to leave. Shouldn't be as bumpy as last go around, but I thought I'd warn you."
River's not sure if she's pleased at finally being able to leave the company of such a mercurial companion, or if she's disappointed that her fairytale adventure is coming to an end. She finally decides that the experience is what it is, and wasting time dwelling on events out of her control is counterproductive.
True to his word, the Doctor handles the TARDIS controls deftly and easily, and there's only the slightest bump to signify their landing.
Eager to see Simon, River runs to the doors. When they open, she finds something she never expected to see. She looks over her shoulder at the Doctor, but he just shrugs and says, "Call it a parting gift."
River is standing on Miranda--newly colonized and bursting with life.
"Don't try to change things here, though," he cautions. "It can't be done. Just spend a little time and replace some of those memories you shared with me with new ones--with good ones."
It's a bright, beautiful day, and River finds a bench in a shady spot of the sprawling office complex. She's always loved to watch people and she does so now with abandon. There's a man and a woman walking side by side, but with a professional distance between them.
They're lovers, but they don't want anyone to know.
There's a young man, not much older than her, chatting excitedly into his phone.
He's going to be a father soon.
There's a woman tossing a coin into a reflecting pool for luck.
If this new project succeeds, she may get that big promotion.
All around her, the people of Miranda are living for the day, every day, never suspecting that those days are already running out. But seeing them like this--laughing, smiling, enjoying themselves--makes the ruined faces and shriveled bodies of later years seem a little less horrific.
After a time, the Doctor emerges from the TARDIS and sits on the bench beside her.
"Can you do this, Doctor?" she asks. "Can you go back to your world…before?"
"Yes and no. I could--that is, the TARDIS is capable--but I won't, because I couldn't bear to." His voice grows hoarse. "And I couldn't change anything anyway. All you and I can do now is hope that our people didn't die in vain."
"But they're already dead, and they don't even know it."
"Would it be better if they knew what was coming? They're alive now, and that's a beautiful thing."
It is beautiful.
River stands abruptly and walks over to the pool. "Do you have any money?"
"I might have." The Doctor rummages through his jacket pockets. "What would you wish for?"
"You know I can't tell you," she says. "It would break the luck."
"Here." He presses a coin into her upturned hand. "Mind you, it's not legal tender anywhere but Grentis IV, but I suppose it'll work as well as anything."
River takes the coin--a green hexagonal disc--and tosses it in.
As they watch it sink, he says, "I understand why you did what you did, River. I'm not ready to thank you for it yet, but I forgive you. That's the best I can do right now. That, and get you back to your ship."
"Her name is Serenity."
"That's a good name. Serenity. Maybe I'll find it myself one day." He manages a small smile at the thought.
"Maybe you will."
After all, sometimes her wishes come true.
They walk back to the TARDIS in companionable silence. The Doctor takes her hand, and she barely stifles a cry at the contact.
Sometimes River sees things that haven't happened yet. They're usually bad news. She sees something in the Doctor's future now--a grey, shaggy wolf with deep-set brown eyes, its tongue lolling out as it paces across the TARDIS control room. River has no idea what it means, but she senses that it is both the Doctor's salvation and his annihilation. She's meddled enough already, so she doesn't tell. He'll find out soon enough.
***
Epilogue
River feels the TARDIS arriving before she hears it, and she's back in the spare shuttle almost before it finishes materializing. She touches the blue wood to make sure it's really there and then the Doctor steps out--
new, new Doctor
--and she takes a moment to memorize his face again before wondering how many more times she can meet him for the first time.
"Doctor?" A woman's voice comes from inside the pretty blue box full of excitement.
"It appears I've mixed up the coordinates," he calls over his shoulder. "Hang on, be right back." He puts a finger to River's lips to shush the questions threatening to burst from her and whispers conspiratorially, "I'm ready now." The Doctor bows slightly at the waist, looks into her eyes, and says softly, "Thank you, River Tam. Thank you very much."
He presses a kiss to her temple and even though there is still a fair measure of
pain/sorrow/anger
in his mind, she feels something that wasn't there when they first met. His resolve to live shines brightly now. The once-crushing grief is tempered by his delight in seeing the universe through the eyes of his companion. No--not just a companion--his
Rose.
Mal's told her more than once that the first rule of flying is love. Love is what keeps your ship together, what makes it a home. The Doctor isn't whole--not yet and maybe not ever--but he's becoming because
he loves.
The TARDIS, the girl, the 'verse--he loves them all.
The doors are closed and the light is flashing and she doesn't know if she can still touch him, but she reaches out as far and as wide as she can.
You're welcome.
fin
***
Author's note:
The title is borrowed from the following passage from Babylon 5. I mean no disrespect or infringement.
There is a darkness greater than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities...it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril, we can never surrender. The future is all around us, waiting in moments of transition to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future, or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.
J.M.Straczynski, 'Babylon 5: Z'ha'dum.'