Fic: Pinstripes & Jacquard ‘Verse, Chapter 17: Shelf Life
Title: Pinstripes & Jacquard ‘Verse, Chapter 17: Shelf Life
Author: psyfi_geekgirl
BetaBabe: akkajemo
Characters/Pairings: Twelfth Doctor, River, Jack, The Master
Rating: PG-13
Excerpt: They were dirty with red rock dust. They were also sweaty, tear-stained and bloodstained. Emotionally and physically exhausted, they still had much left to do.
Word count: 3,851
Disclaimer: Until she’s Jossed, Twelve is mine-but of course, based entirely on stuff that ain’t mine… All hail Auntie Beeb!
A/N: Continuing Part II of Girl in the Mirror ‘Verse. Which, if you haven’t read yet, will give you important backstory and character details which are essential to this ‘verse (the link to the GitM masterlist is provided below). This series is a sort of Season Two. Also written before the end of DW season 6 and TW: MD, so some details have gone AU.
Part I: Girl in the Mirror ‘Verse Masterlist
Part II: Pinstripes & Jacquard ‘Verse
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6
Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12
Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16
A cloud of dust chased itself as the TARDIS disappeared from the rocky Gallifreyan ground in the harsh early morning light. The winds had picked up.
A little over an hour later, two figures appeared in a flash of blue static electricity and a pop. They both carried spades. The male figure in the long coat also had a large blue tarpaulin. The wind whipped at their backs.
“Over here!” cried River over the gusts as her scanner picked up the signature buried beneath the stony ground. She ran them over to a small rise of stones-a new grave. River absentmindedly shifted her foot to avoid standing on the mound. She looked up fearfully into the equally worried eyes of her father.
“Let’s get digging,” Jack said dully and setting his jaw, he began to dig.
Only Days Before, On House…
The Eleventh Doctor’s bio-essence had just been appallingly and brutally dispatched.
River stared at the Twelfth Doctor-not so new anymore, but seemingly just as capriciously closed off to her as any other incarnation had ever been. Man or woman, it made no difference-the Doctor would always be the Doctor.
And right now Doctor River Song was plenty cheesed off at this Not So New Anymore Doctor.
“He knows why he was retconned, River--”
River scoffed at the Twelfth Doctor’s remark. Of course he bloody well knew that now, but she wasn’t seeing her point. “But what about recently?” She stared at the Tenth Doctor. “Rule One, right? It applies to everyone…”
River swore she saw a twitch in the Twelfth Doctor’s cheek.
She could tell by this reaction that she’d hit a nerve. Of course she’d lied to him, why should he be any exception? None of them were exceptions. Not even her.
River stared at the Tenth Doctor with pity and regret. “I wonder if you’ll be as happy with your lot once she turns on you-“
Jack’s voice stopped her cold: “River! Enough!”
Silenced, River said nothing, however the look on her father’s face spoke volumes. She’d always known that he’d loved the Doctor-that wasn’t much of a secret, he’d always been pretty open about this fact as she was growing up. But she could tell by the tone of this voice and the look in his eye that this was different. He didn’t just love the Doctor. He loved this Doctor.
Of course he’d defend her.
Eleven was only two minutes gone and already her own father was staking his claim on his successor.
Did he even know who River really was?
Her rage at Twelve threatened to lash out at Jack, but she pushed it down.
Oh Father, must I fight you, too?
Instead, River saw her opportunity to dump her anger on Twelve without her father’s interruption with Twelve’s order: “River, a word…” Turning on her heel, Twelve stalked away from Ten and Jack. River followed, her eyes narrowing like a predator in the darkness, waiting to pounce. River moved away from the two men who were the paradoxical embodiment of her past and future as she followed the woman who represented the same.
The Twelfth Doctor stalked off several meters between the others before she rounded on her. “So. You have a beef with me? Out with it!”
“How dare you!”
“Oh yes, oh yes! How DARE I! Righteous indignation. How capital! How typical! How pedestrian!”
River growled her response, flailing her arms: “I don’t even know who you are right now…”
“No!” Twelve pointed back at her. “You don’t get to do this-playing the victim does not suit you, Doctor Song.”
“I’ve known you a long time. Enough to know that you have enough character flaws to tax an encyclopedia-“
“Or at least a thesaurus…” Twelve interrupted.
River ignored her with a wave of her hand, “God knows I have put up with quite a lot from you over the years, but I have never seen you more detached or ruthlessly cruel as just ten minutes ago!”
“Ah, well…” She sniffed and looked away. “I am a Timelord…“ she said breezily.
“You’re a right bastard!”
Twelve stooped to look her in the face. “And you… are blinded by your emotions.”
“DAMMIT! YOU KNOW HOW MUCH HE MEANT TO ME!”
“And you don’t think this was difficult at all for me??” River stopped and looked the Doctor dead in the face. Twelve continued, gesticulating wildly. “No! Clearly you hadn’t thought of that had you? It never darkened the threshold of your mind, never even occurred to you! I know that was hard for you, River. Sweet Rassilon, I wanted to comfort you myself, tell you it was ok-that I still remember you, that I still know who you are to me, that I still need you-but you wouldn’t have heard me if I’d tried. You look at me, but you don’t see him. You don’t see your precious Doctor-It’s as if I don’t exist anymore!”
“Of course you do!”
“Then why haven’t you called me by my name once since the moment you saw him?!?”
The angry, tumultuous thoughts in River’s brain screeched to a halt at that one, slamming into each other, they caused a logjam of internal chatter. Surely she couldn’t be right about that?
And yet, something told her she was right.
The Twelfth Doctor sighed. “River, I know how much he meant to you, because I was him once.” She crossed her arms in front of her. “But apparently I’m not him anymore. You don’t look like that at me anymore. Not since I became this,” she swept her hands down her body. River tried to interject, but Twelve held up her hand to stop her. “Oh, sure, we get on well, we’re friends, we make a good team-just like we always did-but it isn’t the same. Not at all.”
River physically deflated a bit, mulling over Twelve’s words. Baffled in the realisation of her behaviour, she looked off into the middle distance, muttering, “I’m sure I called you, ‘Doctor…’”
Twelve sadly shook her head. “You really didn’t. But it’s ok. I understand. I don’t like it, but I understand. And I really do know how difficult this was for you today. And I’m sorry I used you in that way. It wasn’t fair. But this ripple in the continuum can’t wait for pat explanations and sensitive negotiations around everybody’s feelings. This has to be cleaned up quickly and efficiently and without disruption.”
River took a moment to consider her words, and had to admit that the Doctor was probably right. She sighed in capitulation without verbally affirming her defeat. “So. Where are we needed next?”
Twelve shook her head. “I need you to do something else for me-something far more important.” River tried to open her mouth to protest, but Twelve kept talking, ”River, I put you above all others, y’know-I trust you more than anyone else in this universe now, no matter what face I wear. You know this, yes? Cos I need to know right now if-“
“Doctor,” she said thickly, “shut up and tell me what you need…” The Twelfth Doctor’s eyes held River’s for a moment. River could tell Twelve was still weighing her options. “Oh, God, Doctor… Do I have to renew our vows or something?” she teased.
“Ok, fine,” said Twelve, removing a small banded disk from her pocket. “With this Extended-Range Locator, I thee wed…” With a sad smile, the Doctor handed her the object.
River held the cuff-shaped disc in her hand. It looked like a bracelet. “Doctor, what is this?”
“It beeps when there’s stuff…”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Just hang on to it for awhile. It might not do anything. It might not activate at all-“
“But if it does?”
“Find Jack. And bring your scanner to home in on the where and the when. I might need to attach it to something dangerous that will need to be disposed of. Bring some gear. I’ll only do it if I can’t dispose of it myself-“
“Dispose of what?” The Doctor didn’t answer. Her eyes were inscrutable. River cocked her head, her curly blond hair fluttering in the wind. “Doctor, are you going to tell me what I’m supposed to dispose of or is this another one of those things where I’m just supposed to do whatever I’m told?”
“Yes,” answered the Doctor with another small, sad smile. “For as long as we both shall live…”
Back On Gallifrey…
Other than rocks and pebbles flying off the metal of their spades, the only other sound audible over the constant gusts of wind after a little under an hour later was River’s garbled gasp of anguish upon uncovering the Doctor’s bloodied, mutilated hand.
“Oh my God, Dad!!!” she gasped through her hands. Her eyes were riveted to the pale patch of flesh that stood out so starkly against the blood and the hard, jagged edges of the russet rocks-her shimmering jacquard fabric, the only bit of colourful material as far as the eye could see. And around her motionless wrist was an exact match to the bracelet River wore around her own wrist. It was the locator bracelet the Doctor had given her on House after their argument, only days before. River’s eyes swam as she caught a glimpse of the Doctor’s favourite glitter nail varnish in the hazy glint of the diffused Gallifreyan suns.
Somehow the Doctor had known…
With an anguished shout, Jack threw himself down on the rocks and began to desperately paw the material away from the Doctor’s body as if she were simply holding her breath and they were racing against the clock to save her.
Except they weren’t here to save her. She was already dead.
The Doctor was dead.
It wasn’t until they uncovered the grisly remains of her head that River gasped and wept. The ugly, fatal wound made everything so much more real, and so undeniably horrible.
The sounds of her sobs were taken away by the wind as it whipped around the two huddled figures clinging to the skin of the murky red, ruined planet. It was also the only time since their arrival that the two of them stopped their work and allowed themselves a moment to hang onto one another and release the energy of the emotional blow.
Had she been tortured?
They couldn’t even begin to imagine what had occurred. But whatever had happened here must have been horrible indeed.
There was no sign of the Tenth Doctor or the TARDIS. And their scanners picked up no other humanoid life signs above ground. Hopefully that meant that the mission in securing the Eighth Doctor’s bio-data had been successful and the universe was safe once again…
But at what price?
The body of the Doctor lay in the stony earth of her grave, having clearly suffered a single shot to the head by some sort of pistol or blaster. It was clear that the body had been commended to the ground as gently as possible, given the hostile terrain. The familiar camel coat had been lovingly wrapped around her body, offering the only thing on hand to protect against the sharp stones that would assault her tender flesh.
Clearly lovingly wrapped around her by Ten…
River’s heart swelled thinking of the Tenth Doctor performing this grisly, paradoxical, heartsbreaking act of love for his future self.
The tears ran down her cheeks as she imagined it, realising that he hadn’t had the fortitude to set her alight, no matter what the consequences might have meant…
He just couldn’t destroy her.
Jack tried to get River to sit down and rest-let him take care of the next step-but she wouldn’t hear of it. As he unfurled the tarpaulin and fought the winds to set it near the Doctor’s body, he took a more detailed note of her injuries. He’d seen much worse, it was true-but there was something fundamentally jarring to him in seeing this body. For it wasn’t just the body of his dear friend, it was the body of a Timelord… A being of immeasurable power and intelligence-a being practically immortal, like himself-reduced to scrap, nothingness, leftovers…
That seemed unnaturally wrong to him in every sort of way. He had never felt so helpless…
He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. He knew River had a plan, he didn’t even know what it was-he just hoped that it would work. He didn’t need to voice his concerns or his doubts or his fears. He just needed to wrap his friend up and take her away from this godawful place.
Together, father and daughter gently and wordlessly wrapped their friend’s battered and bloody remains into the tarpaulin shroud and hefted her up out of her grave. They hauled her over the mound of sharp, rusty-coloured rocks that she’d been lying under only minutes before. The tears that flowed were quickly dried in the squall, leaving only streaks behind on dusty cheeks. Once they stood away from the yawning chasm, Jack grappled with his load and wrestled the Doctor into his arms, holding her like a sleeping child.
“Dad,” River said as softly as she could over the breeze to Jack. “I need you to stay here for a bit…”
“What? What are you--” Jack started to object, but River cut him off.
“There’s something I need to do. I promise I won’t be but a moment. From your perspective, I’ll only be gone a couple of minutes at the least… Please…”
They were dirty with red rock dust. They were also sweaty, tear-stained and bloodstained. Emotionally and physically exhausted, they still had much left to do. But River had a bit more to accomplish, and her father couldn’t accompany her on this errand.
She’d be seeing him soon enough anyway.
While Jack didn’t exactly relish the thought of being abandoned with his dead friend on Gallifrey, he could tell by River’s face that there was no dissuading her from whatever mission she had given herself. He wrangled the Doctor’s body down onto the ground and leaned her against a nearby boulder. He sat down next to her and sighed. “Fine, we’ll just wait here for you to come pick us up then,” he said, wrapping his arm around the Doctor’s body and pulling her to his chest. “Too bad we couldn’t watch a movie while you’re gone. I bet this looks like a fun date: the Immortal and his dead girl, wrapped up in a blue tarp like a giant burrito.”
It would have been funny if it weren’t already so macabre…
“You two have fun then,” said River, her voice flat and drained. “I’ll be back in a sec. I promise.”
Jack nodded at her. She was gone in a flash.
Months Earlier And Then Seconds Later…
There was a spark of blue electricity and a flash. The Master tasted the metallic tang of teleport exchange as he saw a curvy, corkscrew haired blonde flash into existence before him.
They had only just left.
“What if I can help you?” she asked in a businesslike tone. “Will you help me when the time comes?”
“Will you get me the Doctor’s DNA?”
“What if I give you something better?” She hedged. “Much, much better?”
He grinned at her. “I knew you were a smart one.”
“Oh, I can promise you: I do not disappoint.”
The Master nodded at her. This was going to get interesting…
However, almost as soon as she disappeared, she suddenly reappeared again! Only this time, she looked different-very different.
“Well, ho-ho! Hello again,” greeted the Master with snide cheer. “Long time no see.” His eyes raked across her-a leopard sizing up dinner.
“Yeah,” said River stonily. “Long time…”
The Master studied her. The woman that stood before him looked barely pressed onto the surface of reality. She looked tired. She was only the ghost or a shell of the smartarsed firecracker that had just left. This woman’s hair seemed a bit longer, too, than it had been just a few minutes ago. She wore different clothes. She was also filthy, covered with a fine red dust and grit, and with bloodstains smeared on the inside elbow of her green khaki jacket. Even her hair no longer had a sheen to it.
“I believe this is what you needed,” she said, her voice no longer registering in her head, but she was eager to stop him from staring at her any longer. She held up a small glass phial that contained a whitish, semi-opaque liquid.
He squinted at it.
“And this is…” he prompted.
“What you required: One vial of DNA, as requested. The material needed to create the Restorative Elixir and my ticket to one restoration.” With the last bit, she appeared to gain strength. She was very close to finishing her mission, whilst not exactly accomplishing what had been asked of her. She was being a good companion, but she was taking a few liberties...
She placed the bottle in the Master’s hand.
“Oooh-Eeeeww!” he exclaimed, his initial excitement turning to disgust as he winced at the feel of it in his hand, “It’s still warm! My, my-you have been busy! And almost a full bottle. That Doctor, what a stud-now hold on just a minute… The Doctor’s a woman! So, how did you get this?”
River chewed on the inside of her cheek. “It isn’t the Doctor’s. I told you. The deal was I’d get you something better…”
The Master regarded the bottle as if it might contaminate him, demanding from River, “And how is this better?”
“I brought you the DNA of the only truly immortal being in the galaxy-“
“Not that freak!” cried the Master in indignation.
“Yes, that freak,” repeated River, her eyes narrowing at the Master, her anger helping to rebuild her strength. “You have, in your hands, a bottle of DNA from the universe’s only fixed point in time. A being created with the power of the Time Vortex-a being that no medical mind on Earth can possibly understand or analyze. I might have thought that there would be some Timelord geneticists-some experts buried underground with you here that would specialise in the understanding and classification of such things? No doubt staving off final regeneration has become a necessity after the Time War… Perhaps you can isolate the genetic code or the stardust infused gift that keeps him alive and translate that into some sort of code to keep the regenerations going indefinitely?”
As she spoke, the Master peered into the bottle of liquid, looking at it more and more as if it contained the base code of eternal life-the primordial soup of Endless Timelord Regenerative Possibility-exactly River’s intent. Her words were working on him like potent alcohol masked by a syrupy sweet mixer. He giggled like a tipsy college freshman. He was becoming intrigued to the point of arousal…
“However, if you’re too hung up on ‘that freak,’ as you call him-“ she reached to retrieve the bottle and the Master yanked his arm away.
“Now, now, let’s not be hasty,” he purred. “I think I’m beginning to see the possibilities…”
“So we have a deal?” asked River.
He studied her again. “Something’s happened, hasn’t it?”
She pursed her lips. “We are coming to you. You only have a few months-a little under a year. Can you do it?”
He considered her for a moment, wondering how he might best betray her.
Suddenly her disintegrator gun was thrust into his face.
“The lady asked a question,” she spat at him.
“Yes. We can do it,” he sneered back.
“Good. Get ready. We’re coming.”
“I can’t wait,” he replied, his voice full of false pleasantries.
She disappeared in a loud, electric blue fizzle. He looked with distain at the empty space she left behind. “The Doctor and his women!” he exclaimed. He spat out the tang in his mouth from the teleport exchange and headed off to find his medical researchers; for he had ideas of his own for this unique little vial of liquid...
Several Years Earlier And Several Galaxies Away, Before Seeing The Master…
River arrived just outside the whorehouse in Vooros via the Vortex Manipulator. Nobody looked twice as she appeared out of nowhere. Glancing inside, she saw Jack at the bar. He’d just left the Time Agency and was out on his own, drinking his last paycheck away out of self-righteous anger and misery. Despite all his verbal prowess and yarns over the years, this was the only time and place in history where River knew with absolute certainty that her father could be accounted for in this way.
Now the old family joke would have a new meaning…
She peeked in on him again. Practically three sheets to the wind, he never noticed the dirty, bloodstained woman with the corkscrew curls and the determined jaw who strode through the bar and sought out the manager, flashing a wad of cash.
She told him she had a job for one of his boys…
Two hours later, River retrieved a small glass jar from an exquisitely chiseled male prostitute with deep green eyes.
River forked over another handful of cash and plugged the phial.
“Pleasure doing pleasure for you, ma’am,” said the man.
River nodded dryly at him and pocketed the bottle.
“It sure did get interesting after that other one showed up though!” he drawled as he casually did up his trousers. “That was mighty smart of you to have me take his wallet!”
“I thought double the dose should do it,” said River, blithely finger-combing out a tangle in her hair from the Gallifreyan winds.
“Nearly well done me in!” exclaimed the prostitute. “Funny, too! Not often I get a stud in the sack that’s as bright as he is cute! That Aplans joke he came up with was a real hoot!”
“Yeah,” mumbled River, “a real hoot…”
River turned on her heel and headed for the door.
She had a man to meet about a resurrection…
After Meeting The Master The Second Time…
River was true to her word. She arrived back at the Doctor’s grave in the Death Zone on Gallifrey, just under two minutes after she left.
Jack looked up to see her appear in a fizzling blue haze, looking a little more tired than she’d left, if that was at all possible.
“We’re all set,” she said over the wind. “Let’s go.”
Once again, Jack struggled to get the shrouded Doctor into his arms. “Allons-y, Doctor!”
There would be no petrol this time; but she was still doing as she’d been told.
At least her own interpretation of it…
She called up the coordinates on her Vortex Manipulator. Freeing the Doctor’s undamaged hand, Jack added their hands and River covered them, activating the device.
The two of them disappeared with the Doctor’s body in a loud, buzzing pop and a flash of blue static.
Seconds later they reappeared, deep underground in the hollowed out survivor’s cave in Gallifrey.
They were in the Master’s domain, now...
To be continued in Chapter 18: Time Heals All Wounds…