Hello, Sweetie: River/Eleven (Doctor Who)
Title: Hello, Sweetie
Rating: T
Word Count: 1, 725
Characters: River/Eleven
Spoilers/Warnings: for everything aired; character deaths that we’ve already seen in the show (plus half a one that doesn’t actually count, I don’t believe.)
Summary: Hello, sweetie. They are two words that have worked their way across ages, years and years of faces. When everything changes, one needs something that can stay the same.
Notes: This is the longest Doctor Who fic I’ve ever written, and the longest thing I’ve written in awhile. Unbeta'd, unless my Grandmother's commentary ('They change their faces?!) counts.
Hello, sweetie.
They are two words that have worked their way across ages, years and years of faces. When everything changes, one needs something that can stay the same.
Hello, sweetie.
--
It’s more than his not recognizing her face. She’s used to that. It’s one of the hazards of her life. She’s used to that split second of hesitation before he realizes it’s her, her with a face he hasn’t seen yet. And after all, he’s different too: a new face, or an old one. Either way, it’s one she hasn’t seen. He’s confident with this face, or maybe not: he’s young and interested in everything, talks too fast and too much. She likes him even though he’s not the man she’s used to. But it’s alright, she recognizes him after a second. After all, who else comes when she calls and brings a brave woman with him?
Only the Doctor, hers or otherwise.
So of course she recognizes the man with the hint of wonder in his eyes, but he doesn’t recognize her. Not just her face, the one she’s had for awhile, but her. Everything that makes her who she is, he doesn’t recognize it.
River Song’s hearts break as she always knew they would. She’s dying long before she ever takes his place (and she’s dead either way. If he dies here, he never meets Rory or Amy. He never meets her, because she’ll never have existed. And he doesn’t understand that, not yet. He will, of course. One day he’ll look back and understand but he can’t just yet.) She’s dying long before she ever chooses to.
She always knew this day was going to kill her.
And so, it seems, did he.
--
“Hello, sweetie.” She says, he second time he ever meet s her, and he nearly jumps out of his own skin when he hears her voice behind him.
He doesn’t trust her yet, not really. She knows his name and he knows they ran, will run, together. The thing he doesn’t know is she apparently has a key to his TARDIS and fancies using it unannounced.
“River Song,” He says, announcing it more to himself than to her, because he watched her die for him too soon ago. She’s a bit younger, he thinks, though it’s hard to tell. Well, of course she’s younger. She’s always going to be younger.
“Oh, you haven’t given this to me yet, have you?” There’s something incredibly naughty about the way she says it. He almost blushes. “Spoilers. Where are we?”
“My TARDIS.” He says, because he’s resisting the urge to go over and check she’s really there. He busies his hands fiddling with bits of the matrix. It’s too soon. He can remember the look in her eyes, complete and utter trust and happiness in the second she was going to die, and he hates himself. He hates himself because she’s going to give everything up for him one day.
And there’s nothing he can do to change that.
“Oh, we are early, aren’t we? Who’re you running with these days?”
He stops fiddling and looks at her, standing halfway between the door and the matrix. “Amy. Amelia Pond. Scottish girl. Red hair. Doesn’t listen to directions.”
“We’ve met,” River says, leaning against one of the railings.
“Well, she hasn’t met you.”
“No, not yet.” She looks somewhere between amused, tired, and content.
“ She’s home today, because I told her to. Go home, Pond, I said. She said this trip was going to be boring! So she’s on a beach. With Rory. Good old Rory. No aliens this time, because Rory is always dying.” He’s speaking because he’s nervous; he’s trying to distract himself, but when he looks over, the amusement and the content have gone from her eyes and River Song just looks tired. Maybe a little bit sick.
Maybe it’s the expression that makes him say, “Well, I don’t think this trip is boring. Distress call from an ancient planet, River. One that has no life. So how does one receive a distress call?”
The smile is back in River’s eyes.
“Care to find out?”
And that’s how his second adventure with her begins.
--
“Hello, sweetie” is not normally what one says when one is in the middle of running for their lives. Or, rather, after running into the Doctor, being knocked over, helped up, and continuing to run.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me!” He says, but he’s still running, and so is she. He hadn’t even known anyone else was on this planet except him and a couple thousand talking bears with claws.
They make it back to the TARDIS with seconds to spare and collapse against the door, River Song and her Doctor. It’s been a few years since he returned Melody Pond to her parents. He visits, but he hasn’t had someone aboard the TARDIS since.
Unless you count River, who pops in unannounced and acts more like he’s the one traveling with her than the other way around. He’s seen a few of her faces now, and he’s never quite sure which one is going to turn up, but this one is a new one.
She’s beautiful, of course. She always is. This version of her is brunette, still as curly-haired, but not as tall. She’s got her mother’s eyes this time. And she’s young, on maybe her third reincarnation.
She likes to keep him guessing on numbers.
“You couldn’t have appeared, oh, a half hour ago instead of letting me deal with -“ he mimes the claws - “on my own/”
River smirks. “I like to watch.”
“Voyeur.” He mutters under his breath.
“I didn’t know you were there until I ran into you. There I was, thinking I was on my own. You could have shown up sooner.”
“I did! You didn’t!”
“Depends on one’s point of view.”
“I hate you,” He pants.
“No, you don’t.”
--
It’s how they know, in a second. Like a passcode.
It was useful the time he ran into her, a prisoner of war, and she was hardly anything like herself in face or spirit. It was helpful to know it was River he had to carry back to the TDIS. Or when she showed up in seventeenth century England, sitting casually outside his door. Or - no. He prefers to keep that one to himself.
Time-traveling is tricky for them. Always out of order, faces showing up in the wrong sequences too many times. Her first, her third, her second, her second and third and first. He can hardly keep track on a good day, when she keeps showing up like this - much less know her in a split second when he hasn’t got time to breathe.
Hello, sweetie, covers it all.
--
“Goodbye, sweetie.”
He’s old, so old. Older than he’s ever been. Well, of course he is: today he’s going to die. Well, not die, not really - like how she didn’t die, but so much different, and shh, spoilers.
Six year old Melody Pond pulls the trigger on a beach in America.
--
“Hello, sweetie.”
She’s fourteen, and he’s been searching for what equates, scientifically, to a very long time.
“You remember.” He says, of what he’d said to her at the beach.
“And you said goodbye! And yet, here you are! The Doctor, stuff of legends. You look like a toddler in a nine-hundred year old body. “
“And you look so much wiser than fourteen.”
“So much more dangerous, too.”
“Drop the gun.”
“Drop the screwdriver.”
“Drop the act.” The Doctor watches her face, the un-lowered gun she holds in steady hands, pointed at his hearts. It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last. “It’s just us, and you and I both know you’re not the weapon anymore. You escaped that a long time ago. 1969?”
She mouths the words, “They’re watching.” The gun in her hands doesn’t move.
“Oh, no. Silence fell.”
“Madame Kavorian.”
The Doctor smiles. “The Last Centurion.”
“She’s dead? My Dad -“
“is waiting on the TARDIS. So is your mother. And really, River, one of them is going to kill me if you don’t come along.” The familiarity of the words isn’t lost on him. He takes it all in - her shocked expression, just short of scared, on the edge of hesitation, but she’s on the defensive and she’s ready, two things she always is, even at fourteen.
“Why?”
“Because, River, I’d venture you’ve been running for a long time and you’re tired, and lonely.”
“I don’t get lonely.” She defends, jutting out her chin and interrupting him.
“Yes, you do. So do I, even with all the stars to keep me company. Running alone gets tiring. And you can only do it for so long. Trust me, I know.”
“So I’m supposed to just, what, run away with you? On a whim?”
He seems to consider this. “Run? Well, yeah. Away? No. And I like whims.”
The gun is lowered, but only slightly. “Your ego is ridiculous, and so is your bow tie. You think I’m just going to go with you?”
He grins. “Come along, Song.”
--
“Hello, sweetie.”
She’s beautiful, her voice a melody , hair long and down her back. She’s dressed in white and though she’s over five hundred, he can see this ridiculous amount of youth in her eyes and a happiness, a freedom, he’s sure he’s only seen once or twice and never in this amount.
“Hello.” The Doctor murmurs.
It was their daughter who uploaded him into the library’s system when he died for the final time, countless years in the future.
He’s not surprised to see himself with the face of his eleventh reincarnation. She’d always tried not to play favourites, but he could tell.
“Hello, indeed.”
--
They are timeless, having lived their lives inside of time, keeping diaries and always checking over their shoulders.
And now they exist outside of time.
No more journals existing only to keep secrets in, no more mysteries or fear of seeing non-recognition staring back. No more catching up because fate had decided they should live their lives backwards.
(Though legend has it, if you hold your breath, you can still hear her whisper ‘spoilers’, late at night. But that’s for their ears only.)