Fic: In the blank space between the trenches (DW, River Song)
In the blank space between the trenches
Doctor Who
Gen, G, River Song, spoilers for 5x13
She has an office. Of course she has an office; Dr. River Song is directing the excavation of a site from the earliest phase of irrigation agriculture on Sodos VII. There is a large table, covered in maps and plans, there are file drawers stufed with notes and tablets, there are shelves full of books and reports.
There are gaps in the shelves. There are files she knows are missing, even though she can't remember what was in them. There is a blank notebook in her jacket pocket, its cover worn and its pages well-thumbed.
River pulls the map of the Kritin Tar estuarine system off the top of the table; as the paper moves the image shifts to show earlier versions of the river and delta. Underneath it is the plan of last summer's excavation. The page is almost entirely blank, but for coordinates marked along the edge and the five small trenches they dug scattered across it. In one, two and a quarter grain-pits. In another, a dozen post-holes and the stones and fire-hardened earth of a hearth. A third, at the edge of the grid, had produced nothing but a few potsherds. Then on the right hand side, toward the center, the corner of a mud-brick building and then, in the final square, another mud-brick wall and a scattering of post-holes. A few black marks on a white page, not even the echoes of a long-dead community. She shakes her head, pulls a sheet of tracing paper from the bottom of a stack.
The grain pits first, because it's easy to draw in the missing one. Then the post-holes: she sketches an apsidal house, then another. The mudbrick walls become a monumental structure, open space in front of it, more apsidal houses clustered around, each with its hearth and storage. It's a village: she lets her imagination fill in a line to defines its boundary, the open space in front of the brick building -- a temple, of course, she smiles -- the rest of the houses and narrow streets. Extramural burials? she scribbles at the side of the page. Communal storage? She could go back in time and check, but that would be cheating.
Spoilers.
The word feels like fingers creeping down her back. River shakes her head and pushes the tracing paper off the plan. After another season, or maybe two, then she'll go back and see whether her guesses were correct. Whether that apsidal house was an anomaly, or the norm. Whether the mud-brick walls belong to a temple, or a storehouse, or a wealthy family, or a prison, or something else entirely. What is really hiding in all that blank space between the trenches.
Whatever is hiding in the blank pages of her notebook, in the files missing from her drawers. The empty space that isn't empty: that is waiting to be defined by what she can still see. Something in her life is missing, is buried, is lost, but finding things is what she does.
River Song has an office, but she's always done her best work away from the desk. It's time to find out where she's supposed to be.
End
Guys! It's been more than two years since I wrote anything! And I should have sent this off to a beta, but I wasn't sure that I would ever get around to posting it if I took the time to do so.
This entry has also been posted at http://vaznetti.dreamwidth.org/5068.html, where it has
comments. Please comment here or there, as you like.
Doctor Who
Gen, G, River Song, spoilers for 5x13
She has an office. Of course she has an office; Dr. River Song is directing the excavation of a site from the earliest phase of irrigation agriculture on Sodos VII. There is a large table, covered in maps and plans, there are file drawers stufed with notes and tablets, there are shelves full of books and reports.
There are gaps in the shelves. There are files she knows are missing, even though she can't remember what was in them. There is a blank notebook in her jacket pocket, its cover worn and its pages well-thumbed.
River pulls the map of the Kritin Tar estuarine system off the top of the table; as the paper moves the image shifts to show earlier versions of the river and delta. Underneath it is the plan of last summer's excavation. The page is almost entirely blank, but for coordinates marked along the edge and the five small trenches they dug scattered across it. In one, two and a quarter grain-pits. In another, a dozen post-holes and the stones and fire-hardened earth of a hearth. A third, at the edge of the grid, had produced nothing but a few potsherds. Then on the right hand side, toward the center, the corner of a mud-brick building and then, in the final square, another mud-brick wall and a scattering of post-holes. A few black marks on a white page, not even the echoes of a long-dead community. She shakes her head, pulls a sheet of tracing paper from the bottom of a stack.
The grain pits first, because it's easy to draw in the missing one. Then the post-holes: she sketches an apsidal house, then another. The mudbrick walls become a monumental structure, open space in front of it, more apsidal houses clustered around, each with its hearth and storage. It's a village: she lets her imagination fill in a line to defines its boundary, the open space in front of the brick building -- a temple, of course, she smiles -- the rest of the houses and narrow streets. Extramural burials? she scribbles at the side of the page. Communal storage? She could go back in time and check, but that would be cheating.
Spoilers.
The word feels like fingers creeping down her back. River shakes her head and pushes the tracing paper off the plan. After another season, or maybe two, then she'll go back and see whether her guesses were correct. Whether that apsidal house was an anomaly, or the norm. Whether the mud-brick walls belong to a temple, or a storehouse, or a wealthy family, or a prison, or something else entirely. What is really hiding in all that blank space between the trenches.
Whatever is hiding in the blank pages of her notebook, in the files missing from her drawers. The empty space that isn't empty: that is waiting to be defined by what she can still see. Something in her life is missing, is buried, is lost, but finding things is what she does.
River Song has an office, but she's always done her best work away from the desk. It's time to find out where she's supposed to be.
End
Guys! It's been more than two years since I wrote anything! And I should have sent this off to a beta, but I wasn't sure that I would ever get around to posting it if I took the time to do so.
This entry has also been posted at http://vaznetti.dreamwidth.org/5068.html, where it has
comments. Please comment here or there, as you like.