fic: Set Your Life On Fire

[lonewytch]

Title:  Set Your Life On Fire
Author: lonewytch
Rating: Teen
Pairing/Characters: River/11
Wordcount: 8723
Summary: River causes trouble again. The Doctor is unamused.

Written for the spoiler_song River/11 ficathon. Title from Rumi. For scandalbaby and the prompt: She's a firecracker, a troublemaker, and I can't imagine my world without her. This fic was never meant to be this long, but it grew out of all proportion when the two of them wouldn't shut up and 11 wouldn't stop thinking at me! I hope you enjoy it. 
Thanks to easytheretyger for the beta.


The bright sunbursts of her plasma gun were still trailing across his vision as he rushed across the threshold of his ship. They left vivid blue streaks, warping and shifting against the darkness of his eyelids every time he blinked, drifting lines of fuschia across his vision when he opened them again. His eardrums felt ragged, abused from the cacophony of noise assaulting them only moments before, over sensitised to the shift in the air as he moved from exterior to interior.

Noises were still resounded in his head, like echoes rattling around his skull. The whizzing, popping sound of energy zipping through the air - the static charge of which he could still feel prickling over his skin - the crashes and bangs of energy hitting metal, plastic, earth over and over. The cries of a hundred plus alien voices following them, raised in anger and bouncing from the twisted metal walls of the war blasted city in an animalistic crescendo as they gained on River and himself.

It had all been her fault. He had been there to try and broker a peace treaty between two warring species in dispute over this forsaken little planet. Why they each wanted to lay claim to it was both clear to him and beyond him. It was the birthplace of both, and in a time neither could remember, they had each evolved out of its bones into two similar yet also wildly dissimilar reptilian species. They had since spread out amongst the stars, and this little planet was now considered utterly sacred to each of them. However, this hadn’t stopped them for unleashing weapons of varying provenance and magnitude on its surface, in a bid to win the upper hand in the war over its possession.

However, the remote planetary system it was part of was engaged in a deadly, and ultimately doomed, dance with a nearby black hole. It would be a relatively short time within the grand scale of life before it first became uninhabitable, and then was gobbled up greedily by the swelling blackness, to be compressed to less than a pinprick with every other thing that had fallen into that dense darkness.

But…he understood. He had seen species argue over much less, and he knew only too well the searing attachment to the lands of one’s birth and heritage. So he had gone to try and help.

They had touched down on the planet and then made their way to the designated meeting space, which was to be deemed neutral ground by both parties. He and River had stood at the head of a cracked table, located inside some stone ruins that rose like jagged teeth from a blasted landscape. Members of each species ranged down each side of the table in front of them, negotiating terms for peace in harsh, scraping voices. Dull, muddy green scaling covered the long well muscled limbs and blunt-nosed faces of the Ecthranels on the right, their unappealing natural state covered with battle gear of exquisite ornamentation. In stark contrast, the race known as the Myccans on the left were elegant in comparison, with an elongated body, and long sinuous tails trailing out behind them. Their skin was clad only sparsely, covered as it was with jewel bright skin of varying hues, the main of their clothing covered their truncated stubby limbs. Bright patterns swirled in contrasting colours, sweeping over their whole bodies - part of the natural pigmentation of their scales, and lethal looking fangs protruded from the slit of their mouths. You couldn’t have found two more dissimilar races, he had thought, looking across from one to another as they exchanged words, his head bobbing from left to right, like a spectator at a tennis match. Yet they were both equally short tempered, stubborn and bloody minded..

If he was honest, it hadn’t really been going well anyway at the point that everything went really wrong. Voices had become increasingly shrill, tempers more and more frayed and the room uncomfortably hot as each side ratcheted up the pressure with more and more extravagant demands and terms for peace. He had been beginning to feel fairly sure it was a cause as lost as this little planet itself. He’d stolen a glance at River, and realised that while she was trying to maintain a mask of studious seriousness, she actually looked secretly delighted at the colourful insults being hurled, and the slow, hot simmer of violence that was threading its way around the room. A smile had begun to curl the corners of her lips as she looked on wide eyed, and he had sensed her breathing coming faster. He was about to make his excuses and bow both himself and River out before claws were unsheathed and guns produced. But he didn’t have a chance.

“Boys, boys, boys!” had come a voice from next to him over the harsh screamed insults, and he had turned his head, aghast, to look at River. She had leaned down on the table, palms pressed flat against its surface, arms pushing into the side of each breast, pressing them inwards and upwards. It created a dark valley of cleavage that he had found really rather magnificent. However, they really were of no attraction at all to a non-mammalian species. He’d concluded that it probably wasn’t the right time to point that out to her, and anyway he’d been preoccupied with the fact that she’d just called the senior members of two warrior class species “boys” - until she flicked a glance sideways at him as if to check where his eyes were, and he had realised the little display was all for him.

Still, he’d stood on her foot under the table, hard, in warning that she should shut her mouth, but she had just flashed him a second look filled with fire. It was a fire that he loved about her, admittedly, but it was right now about to get them into very hot water. He’d opened his mouth to speak, but she’d had the jump on him, and rushed her words out first.

“Boys,” she’d said again, suggestively and almost fondly, and he’d watched as every head in the room swiveled to look at her, each face already bristling with insult.

“Really, this argument is beyond stupid.”

“River, I -“

“Stupid, “ she had cut over him loudly. “I mean, this planet. It’s crap. You’ve already ruined over fifty percent of the surface with chemical weapons, and let’s face it, even before you started arguing over it, it wouldn’t have been that great anyway. And now - now - arguing about it is beyond idiotic, it’s a few hundred years away from being annihilated by that.” She had gestured vaguely above her head, towards a gnarled and sagging ceiling. “ It’s going to gobble up this little rock, and it will be as if it had never existed. So this whole thing, you see. Utterly pointless. Honestly, bloody men…”

He had been aware that his mouth was hanging open as she began to speak, and had felt his hearts plummet several storeys and then some way lower again as she had carried on talking. Looking round the room with horrified eyes, he’d felt the lace thin web of violence hanging in the air shift, and turn, seconds away from ripping open over both of them. He’d thought that it would just take one more thing to tear it completely, and if he was really lucky right now, he’d be able to make first their apologies and second, a very fast escape.

“And another thing,” she’d begun.

“River, I don’t think - “ he’d grabbed at her arm hard as he spoke, in a drive to shut her up before she got them both killed. But as he did so he’d felt something long and hard shift inside the long sleeve of her shirt, then slip out from under his fingers in a swift descent towards first the armhole of the garment and then the floor. It had taken him only a fraction of a second to calculate meaning of the weight of it, combined with the brief impression of it against his finger. He added this quickly to the fact that the King in Chief of the Myccans was very clearly not currently wearing on his belt the sacred and priceless ceremonial dagger that had been handed down through his family over generations.

She’d looked guiltily up at him, and mouthed “Ooops,” as he’d stared at her horrified, followed by “Run!” just a split second before the dagger hit the floor. She’d grabbed him by the sleeve, whirling him around as if he was a child’s spinning top, before pulling him stumbling in her wake from the room and out onto the central plaza. They had clasped hands for real, as a roar of complete outrage erupted from the building behind them when the realisation of what River had attempted to do hit home.

Thus, he now found himself gasping for breath and blood rushing in his ears like an ocean swell, as he stumbled into the golden light of the console room.

He watched her skip up the platform, arse wiggling a little -  deliberately, no doubt -  as if she didn’t have single a care in the world, as if they hadn’t just both nearly been killed. He flung the Tardis door shut -  a little harder than he actually intended - but so what? Because when it hit home with a loud bang he saw her jerk a little in surprise, and couldn’t help feeling pleased about it

His blood pushed fast through his body, his hearts pounding hard against the walls of his chest, breathing ragged and heaving. His palm still burned where the skin of hers had been pressed tight against it, and his fingers ached dully from holding on - literally - for his life. The aftershocks of fear still pulsed through him, and he was doubly annoyed to recognise that it came not so much from fear for his own life, but for hers. He shook his head in annoyance, striding forwards and grabbing her by the shoulders, spinning her round to face him just as she set the Tardis spiraling into the slow hum of the Vortex.

She just looked at him mildly, a small smile playing across her lips and he felt a hot rush of anger through his body.

“Bloody hell, River, you have to stop this. How many damn times!” He shook her a little, watching as her ridiculous curls bounced at her shoulders, frizzy now from the electric charge in the air. He squashed the urge to weave his fingers into them, instead focusing in on the tight crimson anger inside him, and the ebbing cold fear that lined his stomach.

“You’re going to get me killed,” he all but shouted into her face, and she shook her head a little in denial.

“No, sweetie, I’ll always keep you safe”

“You’re going to get yourself killed,” he insisted, hating the suggestion of shrillness in his voice. And this, more than anything told him that he was really more frightened for her than angry with her. Then she actually laughed at his words. Laughed.

“Ah, sweetie.” Her voice was rich, deep and warm like honey, drawing out the vowels a little, the suggestion of flirtation teasing at the edges of her tone.

“Now we get to the crux of it. Can’t live without me, eh?”

This felt too cutting and skirted dangerously around a truth he didn’t really want to dwell on then, so he pushed her back, crowding his body close into to hers as her back hit the edge of the console. He looked close and deep into her eyes, making his voice low, dangerous, stripping out the fear and letting the anger drag his pitch down to the low rumble of thunder on a far off horizon.

“One day, River, you are going to get someone else killed.”

She laughed again. And she shouldn’t really be doing that, because the firmness of his voice and the clouds no doubt brewing in his eyes right then, should all tell her that he was the damned Oncoming Storm.

She pushed her body forward a little to press right up against him, wriggling her chest cheekily against his, making his hearts double time and a flush with nothing at all to do with anger spread over his face. He put his hands on her shoulders again and pushed her back firmly away from his body, searching her eyes.

He wanted to see some sort of repentance there, some sort of apology or recognition of the precariousness of their situation not five minutes ago. But instead all he could saw was the flashing deep green of a sea, and for a second all he could think of was how every time he looked at them they seemed slightly different depending on her mood. He could see the small flecks of amber hugging closely around the black of her pupils, and found himself drawing and mapping them out mentally before he could stop himself.

“Don’t lie sweetie,” she purred at him, and he couldn’t help but drop his eyes to look at her lips, the fullness of them, the way they formed themselves around the words as if they were caressing them.

“You love it,” she continued. “The running, the thrill, the danger. You find it as addictive as I do. I know your history, my love, you forget that too often. I know what you’ve been doing all these years until you met me - blazing a path across the universe.” She brought a hand up and patted his cheek gently, the creases at the edges of her eyes growing tender.

“No quiet life for my Doctor. You could have settled down. You could have set Her spinning off out into space, you could have closeted yourself in your library, read your books, visited only the uninhabited lonely places, But, no, my love. You seek out the thrill as much as I do. Don’t pretend it’s any other way.”

Her words hit against something true inside him. He double checked himself, monitored the hormones moving through his body before he brought them under control, recognised the twitching edges of excitement in his muscles, the afterglow left in him by the thrill of the chase.

She was right of course. Damn her, she was often right, though he would never tell her that, lest it lead to insufferable levels of smugness. She was young, right here, right now. Impulsive, reckless- yet that fire in her would never really leave her. He could remember it rippling from her skin, when she was older and he the younger. It’d had him entranced, even back then. It was a fire and a thirst for adventure that would never really be quenched, not even at the very end. He looked at her steady gaze, and falling into the green of her eyes was like looking into a mirror, with both dark and light refracted back to him, a mirror which showed him his own shape. They were too similar for their own good.

Still, he didn’t want to let her off the hook quite so easily. He really needed to teach her a lesson. He reached forward suddenly, pulling her gun from her fingers before she could react, and with a careless movement sent it sailing over his head to crash against the Tardis wall. There was a loud crunch as it hit home, followed swiftly by the bright light of the gun discharging and sparks showering down around them both. He looked upwards to a smoking hole in the roof of the Control Room, hearing a rising rumble of indignation beginning to spill forth from the walls of his ship.

He reached behind River, studiously ignoring the triumphant smile on her lips, his body crowding in close to hers again, as he patted soothingly at the console of his ship. He stroked his fingertips over the smooth surface, sending apology and consolation from his mind and into the old girl.

“See what I mean sweetie,” she whispered, lips just brushing his ear as he leaned over her. “You do love a bit of danger, don’t you?”

“No. Yes. For goodness sake River!” He pushed away, stepping back to lean against the railing, pointing a finger at her, watching as one of her eyebrows arched high at the gesture.

“Don’t look at me like that! What the hell was all that about anyway? You were stealing. Again. What on earth do you even need a ceremonial dagger for anyway? It’s not like you don’t have plenty of - “ he gestured disgustedly at the smoking wreck of her gun on the floor against the wall, “- those things.”

She shrugged. “I liked it. It was pretty.”

“It was pretty?” He shot back incredulously. “Honestly River. Sometimes I don’t even…”

She sashayed over to him, swinging her hips as she came, wrapping her arms around his neck and running her hands over the back of his neck and upwards, to weave into his hair and scrape gently at his scalp. He leaned his head back a little into the caress before he could catch himself. Green eyes looked up at him imploringly.

“Are you cross with me?” She pouted a little, then began to run her hands down the length of his back, traveling lower and lower -

“No. I mean yes. A little bit. Stop it. And behave.” He wriggled away just as her quite lovely hands gripped his arse. He had a point to make, damn it, this was deliberate distraction -  and if she wasn’t going to let him make it by telling her off, then he would have to find another way to do it. An idea bloomed across his mind.

“Right. What we are going to do right now, is to go somewhere lovely and peaceful. Somewhere serene and calm. Somewhere we can be nice and still and quiet. And when we get there, you,” he looked at her meaningfully, “are going to be nice and still and quiet.”

She made a dismissive noise, but he just ignored her, rubbing his hands together, and beginning to flick through a thousand possible destinations in his mind. Alien landscapes scrolled across his inner eye, invoked by his perfect recall. Icescapes, cool blue against an azure sky; hot deserts, flames licking slowly over purple sands as they burned; the lush green of a forest canopy, trees a mile high and the exotic calls of alien wildlife issuing forth from every branch. The images flickered, and then finally slowed, one settling in his mind, as clear as the day he had first seen it.

“Ah! Yes! I have just the place.”

He spun around the console, twirling dramatically as he went, giving a flourish of his hands and catching a roll of her eyes as he passed by her. He punched in the coordinates, tapping their rhythm out without really thinking too hard, numbers and letters coded in his memory.

“There will be,” he announced dramatically, “no guns.” He pointed to the remains of the gun on the floor. The casing was broken, and it was emitting a soft hum, a curl of smoke and a green glow.

“Well, definitely not that gun. Really need to clean that up though. Plasma radiation, not very good really, can’t have it leaking out and seeping through the floor. Goodness knows what it would do to the rotor. Well, I do have some idea, you see this one time -“

“Doctor,” she interrupted. “You were telling me where we were going.”

“Well, that’s not exactly true, now is it River?” He whirled past her again, fear and anger turned now to a growing excitement as his ship powered through the vortex, the hum rising up through his boots. “I was telling you what was not going to happen when we get there. No guns. No fighting. No unnecessary dramatic showdowns,” he ticked the items off on his finger as he spoke, watching her right eyebrow rise steadily higher with each proclamation. “No weapons, though I may have covered that with no guns - but no other weapons either. No stealing of things. No getting us into trouble,” he pointed at her again and watched as she took a breath to say something.

“Hang on, just wait a minute, I’m not done. No running. Definitely no running.”

He watched as she wrinkled her nose in disdain, and although she was trying to look unimpressed, it really came off as quite adorable. So much so that he couldn’t resist stepping into her again, bopping her nose gently with his index finger. He knew exactly what she was thinking - boring. But he wanted to show her something beautiful... in fact he longed to show her everything beautiful he had ever known, everything amazing he had ever seen. He wanted to revisit the places in the Universe that caught in the chest, which made the eyes wide in disbelief and awe. He wanted to share the wonder of it through her eyes. And, if he was honest with himself, in a life so closely birthed in darkness such as hers, he wanted to eclipse some of that darkness with the brightness that the Universe had to offer.

“Are we clear?”  He asked her, giving a final twirl and coming to a standstill in front of her, then stepping in a little closer. Once again they were almost pressed full length against each other, and he saw her pupils dilate fractionally, opening up the blackness inside them a little more for him to peer into.

For a second she frowned and looked like she was going to argue, but switched her expression rapidly and replied sweetly,

“Yes Doctor. And if I’m a good girl…” He felt her arms snake around his waist, hands cupping him low again and pulling his pelvis into hers.

“Yes, well,” he spun away from her again, his hand coming up to scratch his cheek. He aborted the gesture even as he recognised it, refusing to get flustered by her distraction and instead wagged the finger at her.

“We’ll see. Later. Maybe. Yes.”

She looked pleased, and in the amber light of the console room her skin shone warm like honey, seeming almost as if it was glowing in sympathy with the light of his ship. And maybe it was. Maybe the energy that altered her DNA, twisting it a little so that it was half as similar to him - maybe it shone out from her. Perhaps it was that which he could see in the burnished flecks of her iris. He held her gaze, studying her, running his eyes over the planes of her face, the halo of her hair. So familiar, yet so unfamiliar to each other.

The hum of the vortex around them began to dissipate, and he knew she could feel it too. He saw her shift her body slightly to accommodate the landing, even before th rough wheeze of the old girl materializing at their destination began. The sense of solidity began to form under the floor of his ship, the hard ground of the planet beneath them coming and going in waves, until finally his ship huffed out a final breath.

“And we’re here! Rest and relaxation. Peace and serenity. Oooh, you‘ll like this.”

She looked a little skeptical, so he shook his head at her. “Promise. You’ll love it.”

“I love you,” she told him suddenly, apropos of nothing and making the blood in him seem to heat a little, flooding through him warm against the coolness of his skin as it ran through his capillaries.

“You’ll love it” he told her again with emphasis, stepping forward and taking her by the hand. He walked her slowly towards the double doors of his box until they stood there side by side, arms and hands pressed together tightly. He leaned into her, curls tickling at his nose and whispered in her ear, “ I love you, my River Song,” before flinging the doors  wide open.

*
A wide vista opened up before them, framed sharply in the doorway of the Tardis. It was an impossibly vivid painting, all lush reds and greens, the light of an alien sun sending out rays to be swallowed like mist into the amber light of the console room.

They stepped out onto grass, which first glance was lush green. However, he knew that once they started to move around a glittering purplish hue would become evident as the eye moved over it, a second shade shimmering in the minute crystalline structure within, bouncing second hand sunlight off in winks and flashes to play against the eye.  He had landed exactly where he intended, he noted with pleasure - the old girl had done him well. He stroked the side of the box affectionately, running his fingers lingeringly over the blue, while River let go of his hand and stepped ahead, wide eyed at the view around her.

It was a place that offered one of the best views to be had on this obscure but beautiful planet. The green-purple crystalline grass gave way to a beach of deep burgundy sand with a thin surface layer so fine that it was almost dust. It spread before them like a blanket of velvet, stretching away to either side, littered with translucent blue pebbles and rocks which shone under the light of a mellow sun. A white crescent moon cupped the soft yellow disc of the sun, as though holding it safe and stable in the sky. The blanket of sand, punctuated with the blue of the rocks, gave way to a wide ocean - deep green, greener than any ocean on Earth could ever be, even when  teeming with plankton. Deep green like her eyes which, he supposes now, were what made his mind settle on this destination.

Cupping this bay they had landed on were huge ragged cliffs of crystal, rising up from a fractured rockline pitted with rock pools of deep green water. They rose so high, they seemed as if they would scrape away at the blue of the sky, scooping away the planet’s atmosphere and revealing the blackness and the stars beyond. The rock shone both white and blue in the sunlight, appearing for all the world like huge cliffs of ice. The light glanced from alternating smooth and then fractured opaque surfaces, tipping rainbows deep inside the crystal and revealing the secret flaws hidden within. Out to sea were littered huge stacks of similar rocks, as if someone in years long past had taken hold of handfuls of the cliffs and hurled them out there to splash in the water. And maybe someone had, he really didn’t know, or in fact care, about the history of this planet. All he knew was that the soft shushing of a too-green sea on the shore, the warm light from the star this small sphere spun around, and the fragrance in the air that was something close to jasmine, but with heavier and earthier scent emanating from the sea and twisting around it - were that had been branded on his memory for their beauty and serenity.

He knew she would ask the question even before she did, and eventually she turned to him, pointing sideways at one of the cliffs.

“Not ice, obviously it would melt.”

“Correct.” He smiled at her, hearts catching on the wonderment in her eyes.

“Crystalline then?” He nodded at her as she continued speaking. “

The light through it is…” he watched as she struggled to find a word that would fit something that couldn’t really be put adequately into words. “...It really is something else. Beautiful.”

She gestured to the sand and to the grass. “And this too?” She knelt running her hand over the grass, watching the purple green shift and refract the light of the sun and moon. “It doesn’t break.”

“No,” he moved forward and knelt next to her, placing his hand gently onto hers as it rested nestling in the blades of grass. “It’s flexible, it’s not a hard structure, It moves, bends, twists” he swept his free hand across the grass for emphasis. “Hard, yet flexible. Two things twinned. Two good things for anyone or anything to be in fact. You like it here then?”

She looked up at him, eyes still wide. “Oh yes,” she breathed. “I do. What are we going to do now?”

“We, River, are going to do precisely nothing. Well, actually we are going to do something, but it’s not a something that constitutes the kind of something you might like to think it does. We are going to take our shoes off, we are going to walk along this beach, and when we’ve had quite enough of that, then we are going to sit down in the sand.” He gestured around him at the colourful landscape. “And we are going to take in the sea air. See? No drama or danger, just….you and me and here.”

“You and me and here,” she echoed back to him.

She looked so young. Even though this body, which he knew intimately and best -  the body that he loved  - was the most mature that she’d had, he could see it in her. He could read her youth and her relative inexperience compared to the River of his past and her future. Just a couple of months into her sentence, and he could see it in the way she jutted her chin just slightly, the readiness with which she held herself, as if a bolt would strike from nowhere all of a sudden, as if she needed to be ready to strike back at it at a split second’s notice. She was rash, impulsive. Easy to irritate, quick to anger - and she flirted relentlessly. But when has that last one ever not been the case?

However, she had also come a long way since Berlin. Her studies had mellowed her a little; she had a grace and a poise to her now that was absent when she first became River. He supposed that the discipline and the steady hand required to become a Doctor of archaeology had slowed her a little, made her more centered, more steady in herself.

He stood, extending his hand down to her and she took it, rising to her feet, before bending to unlace and step out of her shoes

“So we walk, then,” she stated.

“We walk,” he agreed, kicking his boots carelessly to the side, pulling off his socks and rolling his trousers up a little.

The grass scratched at his feet, tickling and scraping as they walked towards the beach hand in hand. But once they stepped out onto the fine sand, sinking into it up to their ankles,  it was like having his feet encased in a shoe of the softest cloth. The surface sand was so fine that they kicked up eddies as they walked, small deep reddish-brown whirlwinds which were caught by the gentle breeze, and drifted like smoke over the surface of the beach before finally settling again.

“You’ve changed, you know,” he told her, thoughts still circling around the complicated timeline of the woman he once knew -  both the older and the younger versions - and the woman who walked beside him right at this very moment.

“Mmmm,” she hummed in assent. “Change is the only certainty.”

“That’s a bit of a cliché,” he teased, inhaling deeply as he walked.

“But there’s truth in it, that’s why it’s a cliché. Tell me how I’ve changed then,” she asked. He could hear her breathing deeply too, taking in the scent and the sights as she gazed up at the towering white-blue cliffs.

“You’re more solid now,” he told her without really thinking.

She snorted derisively. “Thank you sweetie, you really do know how to charm a girl, don’t you?”

“No no no, not like that. I just meant that you’re steadier now, you seem more like you than when you were younger. That’s what I meant, you’re not,” he gestured helplessly at her body, unable to stop his eyes from raking the length of her. The  flare and the sway of her hips mirrored the to and fro of the waves against the shore, the curve her breasts an ocean swell. He could tell from the small smile playing at the corners of her lips that she knew exactly what he was looking at.

“You’re gorgeous, River. Really, just stunningly gorgeous.”

She stopped suddenly, tugged at his hand until he turned to face her.

“Thank you, my love,” she whispered, before tilting her head up, lips slightly parted, swaying her body towards his for a kiss.

Every time he kissed her, it was wonderful; every time it was glorious. Every time, he remembered the life she had breathed into him in Berlin, the golden smoke of energy curling inside him and spreading through his whole body, enlivening his cells, stimulating the sluggish beats of his hearts. Every time he remembered a kiss cupped inside the walls of a bubble universe, standing on apex of a pyramid under the dark canopy of night. He remembered a kiss that had the power to make time restart again and all the while his hand bound to hers with the smooth silk of his bowtie. And he could remember countless kisses he’d now shared with her. At first he had tried to count them, to catalogue each one, marking them by her unique taste and the subtly different ways she moved her mouth under his each time. But eventually they grew too numerous for him to keep separate in his mind, and now they blurred into one long memory of the pleasure of her mouth against his.

It was a slow and unhurried kiss, accompanied by the sound of small waves breaking, a kiss drenched in the heavy half-jasmine, half-earthy with a pinch of something altogether alien scent. She wrapped her tongue around his, and today she tasted of the smoke that hung heavy in her hair and of mint and of fresh water.

They broke the kiss at the same time, their subtle movements and body language perfectly in sync, each perfectly timed to the other. He sighed in contentment as he pulled away from her.

“Come on then, let’s walk again.”

They set off again down the beach, his arm around her shoulders, her hip fitting perfectly and snugly against his upper thigh as she wound her arm around his back.

“This isn’t too bad sweetie, i could get quite used to this. Trips out to quiet places with lovely scenery. Before you know it you’ll have me sitting in a rocking chair and knitting.”

He laughed out loud at the thought of it. River Song. Knitting.

“Hardly. Tomorrow, i expect, we’ll be running for dear life again. I wouldn’t have you any other way, River. I just wanted to show you something beautiful.”

“And you have done, Doctor, it’s stunning here. I do love it. You were right.”

He let go of her and spun around on his heel with a flourish. The his foot dug deeply into the sand, making it necessary to abort the movement before he had pivoted around fully and almost causing him to overbalance. He swiftly recovered, making the pinwheeling of his arms look both deliberate and - he was sure - elegant. He ignored the twitching of her lips, and the laughter that was apparently threatening to bubble up out of them. Elegant. He turned to her, pointing his finger again.

“Did you really just say that, Doctor Song? Yes. Yes you did. And yes. I was right. Because, of course, I’m always right.”

He brought his hands up and straightened his bowtie, pleased with himself.

“And if that’s the reaction, darling, you will be able to count on that one finger you keep pointing at me today, the number of times you actually hear me say that during my entire life. Don’t be smug, sweetie.”

“Smug?” He puffed out his chest in mock indignation “I am not smug. And anyway, you can’t call anyone smug, you....”

He trailed off as he saw River’s eyes dart away from him and over his shoulder to something behind him. She peered at something further down the sweeping line of the beach.

“Oooh. That looks interesting.” He could read in her tone that along with interesting she was also thinking dangerous, fun, risky, and most probably, like a prelude to some frantic adrenaline filled sex.

He swiveled, his eyes searching down the shoreline, coming to rest quickly on what she had spotted. Several hundred yards away, a large and rapidly growing patch of the deep red-brown sand was heaving and undulating. It looked for all the world like liquid which was just on the point of beginning to boil; as if bubbles would soon rise up to the surface, popping and sending puffs of the fine sand up into the air.

This did indeed look interesting. It also possibly looked like it could be very very not good at all. But his curiosity was piqued, so he whipped his sonic swiftly out of his jacket pocket, pointing it at the heaving mass of sand and listening to its dull whine intently as it changed pitch. As he flicked it outwards surveying the readings, he glimpsed River out of the corner of his eye, hitching up her dress to reveal a white expanse of thigh.

“River, this no time for -“ he began to say as he turned, only to discover that she was sliding out a small gun from a holster strapped tightly very very high up her left thigh. Dark brown leather hugged her pale skin tightly, like some obscene garter, and the dull silver of the slim barrel shone weirdly in the light of the sun and crescent moon.

“I told you no guns! Honestly, River. And keeping it there...” he gestured helplessly to the slide of fabric that was gradually covering her thigh again. “It’s cheating.”

She looked up at him smirking, flicking the safety free of the gun with a sharp click that seemed to pinch at the air around them.

“Ah, but you’re glad now aren’t you Doctor? Just in case.”

He could see her body was all readiness, perfectly formed muscles balanced taut with expectation, eyes now resting keenly on the movement ahead of them. He could smell her pheromones drifting through the air towards him. Excitement, expectation. No fear in there at all.

“No, no, no  -we don’t just go in all guns blazing, we have no idea if whatever that is, is even dangerous!”

She sighed heavily. “Just a precaution sweetie, that’s all. I’m as interested as you are, I’m not just going to start shooting at random.” She nudged gently at his back. “Well, come on then.”

He shook his head in exasperation and surveyed his sonic again.

“Well. It’s definitely alive anyway. Let’s take a look.” He extended his arm in an invitation for her to take lead, even as she stepped forward and took it anyway, regardless. He followed in her wake, the surface layer of the finest sand growing deeper to lick higher around his ankles, giving the impression of a gentle descent down some sort of slope. The sand grew deeper and deeper, lapping and tickling his ankles in a crazy parody of the green sea until finally it began catching and sticking to his trousers.

She stopped abruptly at the point when the sand was almost to their knees and he almost careened into her, bringing himself up short to a sudden standstill at her shoulder.

“I think we should stop here, I think it’s some kind of nest of something,” she concluded.

He nodded his head vaguely in agreement, watching as the sand began to undulate and vibrate at an increasing frequency. The movement sent small waves travelling outwards through the small particles, and a shifting, shushing noise began to rise on the air. It was like the sound of, dry skin sliding across dry skin; a quiet type of noise, seemingly gentle at first, but as it spread from the beach around them in a growing circle, it became louder and louder. Sand lapped around his knees, gathering in drifts around his legs. The surface, shaken and disturbed, began to catch in the wind, puffs of smoke swirling into the air, catching in her curls and landing on his eyelashes. They waited for what seemed like an age. He stood rubbing his eyes and fidgeting impatiently at the slow passing of linear moments. Finally, something happened.

The sand gave a sudden quiver and then, abruptly, went still. All the noise ceased and an eerie silence and calm descended on the beach, the switch from movement and sound to sudden stillness and silence almost disorienting. He turned to River, who still stood watching intently, poised like a hunter.

“Was that it?” He griped. “I thought something exciting was going to happen.”

“Shhh!” She told him irritably, and he turned back to look at the sand which was now layered in concentric and ever widening circles that spread outwards from one central spot where it dipped sharply.

And then something else happened.

From out of the still quiet, from the deep well at the centre of the rings, burst a long and sinewy body. First a head was born from the sand, covered in skin a bright emerald green, stretched taut like canvas over a bone structure shaped like a blunt diamond. Two violently yellow eyes sat on either side of the creature’s head, which flickered to and fro as it surveyed the landscape around. The head swayed on a long neck and a scarlet tongue slipped from the black slit of a wide mouth to taste at the air.

“Oooh,” he breathed softly, barely a whisper as he leaned into River. “Now that is beautiful.”

She nodded slowly, her arms still rigid and gun trained on the creature.

The pendulum sway of the creatures head stilled, as if it had decided something, and then it suddenly dropped to the sand and began to move forwards, a length of body following, spilling out of the centre of the circles. The flow and glide of the body was broken only by four stunted limbs scrabbling weakly at the sand as it moved, while the rest of its shape was sinuous and smooth, the skin a perfect emerald green with an orange sun of beautifully patterned scales sweeping the length of it in elaborate markings.

“River, put the gun away,” he hissed at her - too loudly. The long green body stopped its exit from the hole abruptly, and the head rose on a sinuous neck to turn and look at them. He held his breath. A yellow eye eventually came to rest on them, and he could feel it boring into him as the creature regarded him steadily. In that eye he could see the flicker of intelligence and awareness, just simmering below the surface. It held his gaze for several moments, before finally dropping its head to the sand and beginning to move again. It didn’t give them a second glance, insteading forming its body  into a waving and bowing line as it slithered on a focused path towards the sea. He glared at River and she finally lowered her gun.

They watched as green sea swallowed an even greener body eagerly, the last swirl of orange patterning disappearing and becoming nothing more than a dull suggestion under the skin of the water.

“That was cool! You can’t tell me that wasn’t cool,” he enthused, bouncing on his toes, hidden far below the sand’s surface.

“It was sweetie. Very cool. Beautiful actually, I -”

She broke off as a second head came suddenly questing up into the air, rapidly followed by a smooth slick body, muscles rippling under the tight skin. This time the body shone the purple of amethyst, and blue patterns wrapped it in lazy swirls.

“They’re hatching, it’s a nest “ River said next to him. He nodded his head slowly.

“They seem harmless, thankfully. I wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of one though.” He pointed to the head of third blue serpent that was now making its way down the beach.

“See those fangs? Just peeking out from under the mouth. See the liquid on them?” The tip of the fangs shone and glittered strangely in the sun, coated with some type of fluid that looked almost metallic and milky at the same time, refracting the light of the sun in a shimmer of small rainbows.

“Venomous. Definitely,” he concluded. “Those things would have quite a harsh bite. Probably kill you in about 30 seconds. Ooooh!” He broke off suddenly, a realisation flaring across his mind. The venomous fangs.The colours. Orange, blue, amethyst, green. The swirling patterns, distinct as tribal markings- and how had he not noticed this before! He was stupid, stupid, stupid. Well, not so stupid if only because it was so unlikely, but still, he was completely and thoroughly thick today.

He began pacing the sand as thoughts, ideas and theories ran through his head, kicking up dust and waving a hand distractedly at River to quiet her when she began to speak. How had it happened? A separate group, geographically isolated elsewhere on this planet,  evolving independently and developing the capacity for interstellar travel. Spoors? Theft? Were these the larval form, unable to somehow metamorphose into the adult version due to some change in the environment? Was that why the adults had left?

There was a repetitive background noise cutting into his thoughts, disrupting and scattering them away. He eventually became aware that it was River’s voice.

“Doctor. Doctor.”

He spun to her, took her by the shoulders and turned her firmly to face the nest where the serpents were still slithering forth. He bent his head to her ear, feeling her curls tickle his nose, and smelling the warm scent of sun on her skin.

“Look,” he told her. “Look at the markings. Look familiar? We are so thick!”

She snorted a little. “Speak for yourself, sweetie.”

“But look,” he insisted. “Tribal markings, reptilian species. Remind you of anyone?”

“Ooooh!” she exclaimed suddenly. “Myccans! They resemble them so closely.”

He nodded at her, watching her work through the implications in her mind, her eyes creasing a little as she calculated the possibilities.

“But how?”

“Oh, i don’t know,” he hedged. “A hundred possible reasons, none of which i can really verify. But there’s no doubt at all either a juvenile, or larval, or unevolved version of them, and  therefore - “

“Origin planet!” she interrupted excitedly.

“Precisely!” he agreed, squeezing her tight. “No more war, there’s no need. They have their own sacred planet. I’ve found a way to broker that treaty after all.” He tugged on the edge of his bowtie, straightening it, pleased with himself.

“And,” she declared, triumphantly, “if not for my reckless and dangerous behaviour, we never would have come here, so really you have me to thank for ending the whole war!”

Her smile was smug and annoyingly self-congratulatory, but she looked so pleased, cheeks flushed and eyes bright, that he couldn’t feel irritated with her. He silently acknowledged to himself that technically she did deserve some of the credit, though he didn’t for one second intend to endorse her earlier behaviour. However, he also rushed to stake a claim on the discovery too.

“Well, maybe,” he allowed her. “But I chose this place!”

“Ah, my love, we sound like bickering children don’t we? Let’s call it accidental teamwork then.” She reached up and planted a soft kiss on his lips, and he caught at her waist, pulling her into him unable to resist the taste of her, pleased when her mouth opened eagerly under his.

“Back to the Tardis we go?” He suggested, when he broke away from her, licking his lips after her taste.

She nodded, and began tugging at his waist, seemingly eager to get back now that there was the prospect of returning to what was likely to be a tricky and dangerous situation that would need to be delicately handled. He shook his head fractionally at this. He’d have to have a talk with her before they returned to the war blasted planet they started out at. In fact, it may be safer all round if she stayed in the Tardis. as he allowed her to turn him to face the distant blue shape of the Tardis, standing out brightly against the other shades of the landscape.

They made their way back across the beach in a sweet and still silence, accompanied only by the sound of the waves and the almost indistinguishable hiss and shift of the sand as they moved through it.

They eventually reached the verdant line where the grass fell away to sand, green cut sharply by the deep red, and his ship, vivid blue against them both. Sand now coated his trousers and, where he had rolled them up, his bare legs. His eyes felt gritty, his nose ticklish and he itched at his head, sure there was a small bay stuck in there. He rubbed his foot over the coarse grass to try and divest his feet of their snug slipper of sand, grimacing when the grass scratched at him. He watched covertly as River fluffed out her curls and smoothed her hands over her dress, pressing fabric tight over her breasts and hips. She glanced at him and catching his eye on her. A cunning look lit her eyes, and a suggestive smile spread across her face.

“It really wouldn’t do to go and present this monumental news to the Myccans looking like this,” she told him.

“No. No it really wouldn’t,” he agreed. “In fact, it may even be deemed positively disrespectful.”

He watched as she stepped towards him and reached out one hand to press against his right heart, pushing at him gently at first and then more firmly, walking him backwards towards the Tardis doors. Warmth seemed to spread from her hand, heat uncurling slowly first, crossing the distance from from one heart to the other, and then sinking deeper down into his belly.

“And we wouldn’t want to be disrespectful would we, sweetie?” She asked, and he rapidly clicked his fingers over his shoulders before his back hit the doors of his ship hard, He heard the slow creak of the doors swinging open behind him.

“No. Definitely not. That wouldn’t do at all.”

“So, i think a shower is called for. And, remember, She has just made that lovely big shower that i asked her for especially the other week. It’s such a shame we haven’t had a chance to try it.” Her voice was low and sultry now, and he watched as she bit her lower lip, her pupils flaring wide, black pressing through the bronze and green of her iris.

“It is a shame. In fact it would be rude not to try it right now,” he told her.

The golden light of his ship encased them, as they stepped over the threshold, wrapping them in warmth, light, and the unique smell of the Tardis interior, all smoke and electricity and the sharp pang of Time. The doors snapped shut of their own accord, erasing the framed image of the colourful landscape.

Then she smiled at him.

The heat in her eyes burned slowly, embers at the heart of her fire; a fire that went right through him, the mirror and twin of the flame at the core of his beloved ship. It worked its way under his skin, this fire, writing its name across his insides with light and smoke, with gold and with twisting turning timelines, with the memory of a hundred thousand kisses rippling out into their past and future.