The Sum of Their Memories (1/1, Adult)
Aug. 2nd, 2012 10:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nonelvisTitle: The Sum of Their Memories
Characters/Pairing(s): Eleven/River/Romana II, Eleven/River, implied Four/Romana II and Eight/Romana II
Rating: Adult
Word count: 7,800
Spoilers: none
Contains: pegging
Summary: The Doctor doesn't want to be alone. River doesn't want him to be alone. But he never expected her to fix the problem like this.
Betas:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
platypus and prof_pangaea
Disclaimer: Not mine, obviously.
Author's Notes: Fic by request forlizbee and violetisblue. Contains some content from the LKH video prequel.
::xposted to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
spoiler_song, dwfiction, ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
rivereffinsong, and dwfiction, and archived at Teaspoon and AO3
Romana thrust smoothly into the Doctor's arse. She gripped his sides and leaned as far across his stomach as she could. Her blonde hair whispered against his skin, tickled the edges of his ribcage.
River dragged his head back by his fringe, exposing the tender skin at his neck for her to worry with her teeth. She stroked his cock steadily, pressure building with every motion.
The air smelled of musk and sweat and electrostatics, an ozone tang where ions had broken apart and come together to make something that shouldn't exist; but it did, thanks to River and the TARDIS and his own memories, locked away and asleep in his mind. She existed. And she was in bed with him right now.
* * *
So many bodies ago, he'd once said, a man is the sum of his memories; a Time Lord even more so. All he had left of them were memories; memories and those ghastly screams he'd heard on House, the panicked nightmares of the long-dead.
The TARDIS, at last, was safe, her parasite destroyed. She'd settled back into her accustomed body, lights shimmering and console humming with satisfaction beneath his fingertips while she took him where he needed to be next.
The home of a ghost-to-be. River's cell.
She had died before, too, even she didn't know it yet, but at least she was here, now, drowsily rubbing her eyes in the quarter-power light Stormcage used at night.
"And me in my skivvies instead of lingerie," she said. "You should have called first."
"I'm just here to talk, River."
She yawned, stretched out her hand to pull him down beside her. "We'll see."
The synthetic wool of her blanket made his skin itch, but River was warm and plush beside him. Lying here talking to her for a little while couldn't hurt, probably. The TARDIS had brought him here, after all, and probably not to notice the way River curved her body to match his, or the way her index finger lightly scraped the nape of his neck. Not that he was noticing. Probably.
"For someone who came here to talk, you're not doing an awful lot of talking," she said. "That's fine. We can lie here until you change your mind." She wriggled under the blanket, curling tighter to him, her lips grazing his cheek.
"The only water in the forest is the river," he said. "Idris – the TARDIS – she told Rory, 'the only water in the forest is the river.' Does that mean anything to you, River?"
"No." Her voice vibrated on his skin, and he suppressed a shiver. Probably he ought to sit up instead of lying here next to her. Probably. Instead, he shifted to his side and draped his arm over her blanket-covered waist.
"Are you absolutely certain? Because the TARDIS – she's not always the most linear thinker, which is exactly what you want in a time machine right up to the point she's incarnated in a patchwork woman who speaks in riddles you have to interpret if you want to live. Which is not the sort of thing I thought I'd say someday, but you know, things happen. And your name, as you may have noticed, is 'River.' So I thought maybe, just maybe, there might be a connection there."
She folded back his hair, kissed his forehead. "Just coincidence, my love. I'm sorry."
There was no tremor in her voice, no twitch in the shadows folded across her face, to indicate a lie. And the touch of her lips to his, the sweet tip of her tongue tracing the lines of his mouth, that felt like the truth.
* * *
In bed, much later, watching dawn filter through the frizz of River's hair, he told her about uncovering this final indignity to his people, the cacophony that had called to him, that had made his heart swell with hope he knew he shouldn't feel and didn't deserve.
"I'm so thick sometimes. Old and stupid and thick as treacle," he muttered.
She squeezed his hand, her fingers laced with his. "You're really not, you know. Most of the time."
"I was this time. I let myself believe in something I shouldn't have because I wanted it so very badly."
"You never know. There might still be someone out there."
"All things die, River. And ... they're long dead now."
"All things do die," she said. "But all things can be remembered, too. You can't make yourself forget them just because their memory hurts."
"I don't want to forget them. But no good comes of thinking of them, either. They just scrape at me. They've worn me away."
"You can't let yourself think like that. You did what had to be done. Anyone would have done the same."
His face hardened. "No, they wouldn't have. There was just me. Me and – oh, it doesn't matter. She wasn't around for the end anyway."
"She?"
He flipped the covers back and fished for his trousers, inside-out in a lump beside the bed. "I'd better be getting back. Pond'll be waking up soon, and I don't fancy explaining why I've been out all night.'"
"You haven't answered my question. Who was 'she'?"
"Leave it, River."
"If you insist," she said, sighing. "For now."
* * *
River always did drag him like a lodestone, curving him round her magnetic field until he could no longer resist her draw. He didn't tell the Ponds that part of the time he'd said he was looking for their daughter, she was right there beside him, alive, unharmed, old enough to know better, yet still warming his bed.
Having exhausted his leads on the Silence – really, there were only so many times you could blow up a Cyberfleet and expect cooperation – asking River for help had seemed like the obvious solution: she was the daughter in question, and surely she knew where she'd been when her parents were seeking her. A quick note to the warden – Dr. Song is needed for an urgent furlough investigating the Lost Ark of Leadworth, don't worry, have her back in a jiffy or a fortnight, whichever comes first, sincerely, Dr. J. Smith – and no one would miss River if she disappeared from her cell for a while, which she did, one hand on her diary while the other loosened his bow tie.
But he'd underestimated how well he, or perhaps those who'd raised her, had taught her to keep her secrets through avoidance, misdirection, and outright lies; no amount of enticing her with places she shouldn't be and things they shouldn't do would convince her to give him more than that enigmatic smile, and no amount of sex seemed to do the trick either. (Not that he was complaining about that.) She disappeared in the TARDIS for hours, whispering to the ship instead of him, and he'd find distractions randomly placed in his way: a heating system breakdown that had coincidentally required huddling for warmth; a jigsaw of Lake Silencio, its pieces scattered across five different rooms.
Today, his chosen bribe for River was fat and flaky croissants, still warm from a boulangerie in the 7e arrondissement, pots of marmalade and chocolate spread beside them. Something simple this time, at least compared to taking her to see the private library of the Emperor of Grzh without the emperor's permission; perhaps this, finally, would do the trick.
He found her seated on a stone bench in the Cloister Room, her body stiff, eyes shut tight in concentration.
"River?"
"Ssh. Almost done."
He set the tray beside her. Gradually, her fingers pried themselves away from their grip on the edge of the bench; she blinked, slowly.
"Did it work? It felt like it worked," she said. She sprang to her feet, ducked behind columns, searching.
"Did what work? Come and have a croissant; they're scrumptious."
Ivy and wisteria rustled at the far end of the room. A damp and loamy perfume filled the air. There was a shuffling in the distance: hesitant footsteps sliding across the stone floor, followed by the rapid tap of River's boots running to meet whatever had turned up.
The Doctor put down his croissant and licked a pastry flake from his thumb. "River? What on earth are you doing back there?"
"Come and see."
River constantly surprised him. Sometimes they were terrible surprises, like her infuriating delay at Demon's Run; sometimes they were so welcome he didn't know how he'd lived without them. But this time, she'd outdone herself.
Standing next to her, swaying unsteadily in a pleated red gown, was Romana.
* * *
"Hello, Doctor," she said.
Hello. Not you monster, you killed us all, didn't you, or oh, of course, you must have used a temporomandibular whosiwhatsis tuned at exactly 53 nanohertz to extract me from E-space, about time, really. Just an ordinary "hello," quiet and small as the woman wavering in front of him.
"Romana," he said. He could hardly breathe. Her name evaporated from him like a sigh. "It can't be. Is it really ...?"
"No," she said. "Not really."
She flickered for a moment. Not faltering, not leaning on River for support: a jitter and crackle of light, and a wisteria silhouette behind her chest.
"Still buffering," she said. "I should be complete in a few minutes."
Gooseflesh prickled across his arms. The wavering, the flicker, the flowers where Romana's hearts should have been. River tangled with him on her narrow Stormcage bed, her words whispering in his ear: all things can be remembered.
"River," he said, his voice cold. "I'd like a word. Now."
"I thought you might," she said. She led Romana to the bench, made sure she was comfortable, and followed the Doctor to the hallway.
* * *
"River, what have you done?"
"I should think it'd be obvious. You were lonely. You were upset. You needed your people. And the TARDIS knew what to do. She just needed my help to focus enough mental energy to create the construct."
"You keep trying to distract me, River, and why you picked this distraction, this particular distraction ... River, do you know why the TARDIS knew what to do?" He tried to push down his rage, swallow the voice inside him that just wanted to yell, keep yelling, until River hadn't done what she'd done. "I did something, once. And I'm not proud of it, but I did it, and it's done, and I haven't looked at her – it – since I did it." He wiped his eyes. "It wasn't a good time in my life, River. I'd gone a bit mad. And my people, we had something similar, although that wasn't where I ... anyway, never mind where I got the idea, the point is, I was on my own because I didn't want to ruin anyone else. So I made her. To talk to."
"Just to talk to? She's awfully attractive for someone you only wanted to talk to."
"Yes, just to talk to! Not that it's any of your affair whether we'd have done anything else, and I hadn't got the quantum-locking tuned quite right for solidity anyway, and I'd gone a bit mad, did I mention that?"
"You shouldn't be alone," River said fiercely. "I can't be with you forever. No one can, except her. You've done so much for me. And if you'd seen yourself that night in my cell, when you told me about your people ... you'd have done the same."
"River, River, River. I'd already tried that," he said. "I made a Romana from my memories and her bond with the TARDIS, and then I unmade her, because I came to my senses long enough to realise what I'd done."
"And yet you didn't delete her program. How strange."
"She was practically alive. I couldn't be with her, but I couldn't kill her, either. You have to understand, River: she's alive enough to know what's going on, but not enough to be alive. She can never leave the TARDIS. She's stuck with daft old me, rattling round this ship, forever."
"Being stuck with you isn't the worst fate I can imagine, unless you keep being this stubborn."
"River! I had the right to try to save her. I didn't have the right to keep her. Can't you see the difference?"
Her brow crinkled, and she closed her eyes for a moment. "You never understand, do you, just how far people will go to show you how important you are to them? That you're worthy of their love?" She slapped the door switch, and the mossy scent of the Cloister Room wafted into the corridor. "Go on, then, tell her she's a mistake and you don't need her. You did it once before; you can do it again. I'll be in our room, packing."
She was halfway round the corner by the time he called out, "All you brought was your diary, River! Come back here!" But the only sound he heard was the tapping of her bootsoles, softer and softer, until there was nothing.
* * *
"That went well," said Romana. She was holding a croissant in both hands, sniffing at it. "Butter, butter, butter, and just enough flour to hold it together, I should think. And you brought marmalade! Pity River isn't here to enjoy it."
"There's no need to rub it in."
"Oh, I think there is." She dropped the croissant back on the plate, scattering pastry shards across the tea tray. "She was only trying to help. And it was terribly wrong of you to make me and then dismiss me before we even had a chance to talk. I see you've regenerated, by the way. Hopefully just the once. You were always so careless with your bodies."
"Just once, yes, and I'll have you know it wasn't due to carelessness."
"That's good." She draped blonde hair over one shoulder, leaned down to inhale the scent of the croissants again. "I do wish I could do more than smell these, but I suppose even the TARDIS' holographic constructs have their limitations. Is this even my memory of what a croissant smells like, or is it your memory of that little boulangerie we went to?"
"I don't know." He reached for her tentatively, hand stopping just shy of her shoulder, then skimming it with his fingertips. The raw silk crepe scraped the pads of his fingers, as it always had, and beneath it, Romana's shoulder felt solid. Alive.
He let his hand fall. "River shouldn't have done this."
"But she did. And don't tell me you're not happy to see me. I may only be a three-dimensional quantum-locked holographic construct, Doctor, but I'm not stupid."
"A hologram based on our memories? No, I should think 'stupid' is the last thing you'd be."
"Speaking of memory," Romana said, "there are holes in mine. Uncomfortably large ones. Can you explain, for example, why I can't remember how the war ended? That's not the sort of thing I'd tend to forget. I was in that prison cell, and after that ... there's nothing."
"We lost," he said quietly, then jumped to his feet and started pacing beside the bench. His fingers twitched. "We don't have to discuss this now, you know. If you're going to stay, we've all the time in the world. Whole galaxies and universes of time."
"We lost."
"Yes."
"Oh, my."
She'd gone pale, but the cracked stone walls weren't bleeding through her this time. Not a glitch in her projection, then.
"How many of us – are there any of us left? It wouldn't be like the Daleks to leave survivors, but if they needed us ... and oh, oh no, how far have they got? Tell me they're contained."
"As contained as they ever are," he said. "We've had a few skirmishes. But they didn't take over Gallifrey, if that's what you're asking."
"I suppose that's something," she replied. "You didn't answer my other question, Doctor. How many of us are left?"
How could he tell her? It's just me. Just me and my memories, rattling round a great big blue box, forever and ever.
Romana stuck out a foot to catch him, and waited until he stopped pacing. "Just tell me this: am I alive?"
Fingers twitching, rolling over each other, a jittery ballet. He realised what he was doing, stilled his hands, and said, "I don't know, Romana."
* * *
The Citadel prison was the last place he'd seen her. He didn't count the drone carrying her that had punched a hole straight through to E-space, neatly stitching the tear shut behind itself.
The tidy, cheerless grey of her cell, more spacious and clean than its neighbours, but only because this one held the deposed president of Gallifrey. Romana's head had been bent over her journal as she tapped out words she never shared with him. The delicate flick of her index finger, tucking straws of blonde hair behind her ear.
"I'll keep trying, Romana," he'd said. "He's already agreed to exile instead of execution. I won't give up until he lets you go."
Tap. Tap. Tap. Still writing something he'd never know; her memoirs, perhaps, or equally well what she'd had for lunch.
"He won't," she'd replied, head down, focused on her datapad. "He's completely mad."
"There must be something I can do!"
"You've more important things to worry about now," she'd said, and when she'd looked at him, there'd almost, almost been a smile on her face. "Thank you for everything you've done. If I can come back someday, I will."
* * *
River was still in his room when he finally retired for the evening, but she turned her back to him in bed, hand cupped over her diary while she attacked it with a Biro. She shook her right hand, flexing her fingers, then returned to work.
"River." He kissed the hard edge of her shoulder. "I'm glad you're here."
River scribbled a few more words, stabbed the page with the Biro one last time, and laid it in the crease of the book. "So, I'm forgiven?"
"You still shouldn't have done it –"
"Ah." She picked up the pen again, hovered over the page.
"– but you meant well."
The pen dropped again, and she flopped onto her back to face him. "I think that counts as forgiveness."
"I'll always forgive you, River. But you understand why I turned her program off before, don't you?"
"Yes," she said, "but it sounds like you could have used a companion at the time."
"Well, I did say I'd gone a bit mad. Having someone else around might have helped, but that's the sort of thing one only realises in hindsight."
"All I wanted was to save you from being alone," she said, stroking his cheek, "but I'm sorry I upset you."
He turned and kissed her palm. "Thank you, River. Apology accepted."
"She's an interesting one, that Romana of yours. I caught a few glimpses of her while the TARDIS and I were connected. You two certainly did get up to some trouble."
"You should have seen her when we first met. All stiff and proper, completely convinced I was doing everything wrong."
"You probably were."
"'Wrong' sounds so judgemental, River. I have my own unique methods that have served me well over the years."
She grinned up at him. "Definitely wrong, then."
"You stop that," he said. "You've been very difficult today, very difficult indeed."
"Tell me you don't like it." She pushed back the tweedy shoulder of his jacket, helping him shrug it down his arms.
"In the morning, you're going to tell me where to find you. Don't think I've forgotten about that."
"I know you haven't, but I can't help you."
"Not even if I ..." He listened for her gasp at his touch. Ah, there it was, a swift sigh and puff of breath on his neck.
"No," River murmured, and drew him closer. "But you can keep trying if you like."
* * *
The TARDIS' landing on Lobellia the next day was uncommonly smooth, her usual thunk replaced with a muffled whisper.
"I spent yesterday re-tuning the landing avionics," Romana said. "Remarkably pleasant compared to researching Gallifrey and the Time War in the TARDIS databanks."
"I think," the Doctor replied, quickly tallying the number of ways he could permanently distract Romana from the subject, and arriving at zero, but worth an attempt, "this is hardly a suitable topic for our picnic. River, do you have the hamper?"
"Putting it outside now," she said, throwing open the TARDIS doors to reveal teal meadows dotted with white and butter-yellow flowers.
He offered Romana his arm, and though she fixed him with a stern look, she looped her arm below his, resting her hand on his bicep.
She ate nothing, but admired River's choice in cheese and fruit, praising her for picking wine-red dried figs from Telamos IV instead of the inferior green ones. She relaxed on the tartan blanket they'd laid just outside the doorway, plucking blades of grass and twining them into a braid. And finally, carefully, she picked her way to the point where a sharp line cleaved the meadow and circumscribed the TARDIS. Breathed deeply, sniffed the air, spent a minute watching a family of squat river-horses sipping at the edge of a pool at the base of the hill.
"The air is quite refreshing," she said. "I think I'll enjoy it for a while. You two should go find some trouble to get into; no need to worry about me."
"That hardly seems fair, Romana," said the Doctor.
"It isn't," she replied, "but it's reality, at least until I run some more feasibility calculations on portable holographic projection devices. Go on. I assure you, I can entertain myself."
"If you're sure, then," River said, hand hovering over the plate of figs, ready to pack it back in the hamper.
Romana smiled and clasped her hands together. "Please. Go. Besides, you'll need someone to rescue you later; I'm certain of it."
"How well you know him," River said.
* * *
The rescue from the Lobellian royal dungeons took place approximately thirteen and a quarter hours later, when a blue box materialised in two cells, each barely big enough to hold it, and disappeared with the cells' occupants.
"Honestly," the Doctor said, indignantly wiping cobwebs from his jacket, "suggest the Peasant Oppression Monument could do with a little less peasant oppression, and suddenly everyone's a critic."
River covered Romana's hand with hers and said, "Thank you for coming to our rescue. I'm sure he'll appreciate it once he's finished moaning about police intolerance. How did you know to come looking for us?"
"You'd been gone a while, so I had the TARDIS scan for human and Time Lord life signs. Once you'd been still for more than two hours, I assumed you'd been captured."
"That's a very cheeky assumption," the Doctor said. "We could have been, I don't know, sleeping. Or participating in a contest to see who could stand still the longest."
"Or, more likely, captured."
"Aren't you supposed to be running some calculations instead of insulting me?"
"I don't believe those are mutually exclusive," Romana replied. "The TARDIS is running my calculations right now. I'm afraid they're not terribly promising, but one never knows."
"Oh, Romana," said River, "I'm sorry."
"It's all right. I can occupy myself here if I must. There's a magnificent library, and the TARDIS could use some upgrades. In fact, given your association with the TARDIS, if you'd like to help ..."
The Doctor ran a hand through his hair, straightened his jacket. "In that case, I'll leave you two to it," he said.
* * *
He reviewed Romana's work in his laboratory. It probably didn't count as spying if she were likely to ask him to review them himself anyway, and besides, they were calculations he should have run himself before creating her template in the first place.
Not his finest moment, that template. Pathological loneliness and temporary insanity made a poor combination, even if his hearts had fluttered to see her that first time he'd summoned the hologram, and every time since. She looked the same. Sounded the same. Needled him in that same way that both prickled and delighted him.
He wondered if she tasted the same, if every memory of her he had – and every memory of him she'd acquired when they travelled together – had survived the TARDIS' transfer process.
And if she ever looked at him again the way she had the last time he'd seen her, the real her, how could he know if she was remembering her fondness for him, or if his own memories were at work instead?
She deserved more. Memories they could both be certain of; memories she'd made on her own.
He rolled his shoulders, tried to shrug off the distractions. He could be a terrific planner when he tried, but grasping the consequences of his planning wasn't always his strong suit. Now that he was face-to-face with those consequences, quite literally, he needed to deal with them.
But the figures the TARDIS showed him stubbornly refused to cooperate. Brains were optimised for memories, a Time Lord's especially so. Microcircuitry wasn't, and Romana's precise, multidimensional calculations bore that out. They needed massive databanks to store her.
She might set foot on alien ground, taste the tang of alien air, appreciate the twin suns of Telamos IV as they set for the week – but all that would happen within the safe radius of the TARDIS' external projectors unless he found a way to cram a planet's worth of storage into something Romana could carry in her pocket.
"All right, old man," he said, "you know she doesn't make mistakes, but maybe just this once she's forgotten to carry the one. Try again, and if that doesn't work, you're going to keep on trying until it does."
* * *
It didn't.
Days passed. Romana cheerfully helped pilot them from planet to planet, handling remote research and still more rescues the Doctor grudgingly acknowledged as occasionally necessary; River cheerfully flirted with them both; and the Doctor somewhat less cheerfully kept digging for solutions for his two unsolvable problems: a woman he couldn't keep, and a child he couldn't locate.
He'd always been a keen observer, and he spent his downtime watching his two shipmates, hoping there'd be a clue in the way Romana squinted at the transducer coils, or in the cant of River's head as she scribbled in her diary. Instead, all he learned was that he'd apparently been quite neglectful of proper transducer maintenance, that River was remarkably deft at deflecting questions about what she transcribed, and that the way her fingers lingered at the curve of Romana's neck could inspire some very inappropriate thoughts.
They were locked in stasis. Romana, although she continued to tweak her calculations, showed no other outward signs of frustration with her fate, and River steadfastly continued to refuse to give him any details of her whereabouts. With the two of them seemingly content to bob along in the water as long as necessary, it was up to the Doctor to nudge them towards shore, if he could only come up with the right prod.
Because he was chewing over that very problem late one night while simultaneously analysing Romana's latest transducer enhancement, he let the telephone ring through to the answerphone. Twice lately the calls had been someone trying to sell aluminium siding anyway, which would frankly have looked ridiculous on the TARDIS even if he could have got the right shade of blue.
This time, when the answerphone grabbed the call, he recognised the voice immediately, and froze at the console.
You said you'd find my baby. You said you'd find Melody. Have you found her? Because you promised. I know she's going to be okay, I know she'll grow up to be River, but that's not the point. I don't want to miss all those years, you know? I can't stand it. I can't. Please, Doctor, please. Okay. Phone me back when you know something. Please, Doctor, at least do that. As soon as you know.
When the machine clicked off, he was still standing in place, staring blankly at the dials below him. How much time had he wasted waiting for River to help? And how much of that had he let himself waste because deep down, he knew she wouldn't help, but he wanted her around anyway?
And then there were the living, or living enough, consequences of having let River stay: Romana, whom he'd set free if he could, but who'd break his hearts if she left.
He reached for the erase button, but stopped himself before pressing it. Here, at last, was what he needed to lead River where he wanted her to go.
* * *
He played River her mother's anguished telephone message and watched her face crumple.
"I made a promise, River," he said. "I promised my friends I'd bring their baby home to them."
"You made a promise you can't keep." She brushed a finger past the corner of one eye.
"I can keep it if you just tell me where you are!"
"Don't ask me that again. I'm where I'm supposed to be. Where I'm supposed to be then. Where I'm supposed to be now." She softened. "But they haven't lost me. That's a promise I can keep."
"River. This is it. If you won't help me, I'm taking you back to Stormcage."
"I'd have needed to go back eventually anyway. Besides, the guards get lonely without me."
He tapped the typewriter keys on the console and spun a dial knob beside it. Stormcage it was, then.
River slammed the dial with her hand. "Wait. I can't tell you where to find me, but give me tonight to say goodbye, and I'll give you this." She caressed the nape of his neck, leaned in to whisper a date in his ear. "You might find The Leadworth Chronicle particularly interesting that day."
"That's it? A story in a newspaper? Why didn't you tell me this earlier, River?"
"I shouldn't have even told you that, and you know it. You set the rules and then expect me to break them when it's convenient for you? I don't think so."
"You break them when it's convenient for you. Like 'don't root through the TARDIS databanks to find my abandoned projects.'"
"I can't believe you're calling Romana an 'abandoned project.' She's the only other Time Lord left."
"No, I'm the only Time Lord left. Romana is ... a ghost."
"There's no crime in wanting to save someone you love." She laughed. "Or maybe there is. But that, my love, means spoilers."
He let her words tumble round his head for a moment, leaves sifting and billowing over each other until they drifted together in a pattern. Save someone you love.
"Yes," he said at last. "I'm afraid I've got spoilers as well."
* * *
He asked Romana to meet him in the small sitting room, the one with Chinoiserie wallpaper and the comfortable but tattered crimson paisley settee. Romana walked in moments after he arrived; she could have just had the TARDIS reformulate her in place, but he'd told her how unsettling he found it to have her materialise like his ship. It only reminded him of what she was, and who she wasn't.
"I've tried, Romana," he said. "I've gone over your figures dozens of ways, but the results are always the same."
"I imagine they are. They were my calculations to begin with." She drew her knees up on the cushion, circled them with her arms. "But I appreciate your thoroughness."
"If I'd thought for a moment that someone else would try to resurrect you like this, I'd have erased the program."
"No, you wouldn't have."
"I'd have thought about it."
"When River was re-forming me," said Romana, "I got the impression something had gone terribly wrong for you. She had so much regret in her. I think she still does. But she only wanted to help."
"She didn't tell you what happened?"
Romana shook her head.
The Doctor shifted closer to her and took her hands in his. "I got a message from the Corsair. A distress call, only it turned out to be a trap for a creature that ate TARDISes. It had been luring our people to their deaths for years, as if there were enough of us to spare.
"All those screams, Romana. You can't imagine it. The death cries of so many Time Lords, calling out one last time, with no one there to help them, not even me. And I don't know whether I'm grateful I didn't hear your voice, or whether I wish I had, because then at least I'd have known what became of you.
"You're lost. Somewhere out there, I hope in E-space, I hope still as alive as you ever were. Telling some poor sod how very wrong he is, and doing it flawlessly. I want to believe you're out there, and that you're happy, because I can't bring you back. Not without them, and they're long gone."
"You've done what you can," she said. "I've had these extra days with you and River, and they've been wonderful. But I can't be happy trapped in here. I'm not real." She squeezed his hands. "I think you should delete my program."
"But that's why I asked to see you, Romana. Because I can give you a choice: I won't just turn off your hologram this time, not unless it's what you really want. There's a place I can take you – a place where you'll be able to breathe fresh air and walk on the grass, or at least what feels like it. Have every kind of adventure you can imagine, literally. You'll have a life, a proper life."
"That's impossible."
"No, just incredibly unlikely."
"There must be a catch. There's always a catch with things like this."
"There is," he said. "You mustn't tell River where I'm taking you."
She plucked at a gold thread, loose at the edge of the cushion piping, wound it round her finger. "And why's that?"
"Because she's there now, only she doesn't know it yet."
* * *
The Doctor was unsurprised to discover that River's idea of "goodbye" involved his bedroom, Romana, and a souvenir River had picked up on their trip to Alviya.
She withdrew the translucent dildo from a shopping bag and gestured to Romana. "It's slightly psychic," she said. "I think you've enough of a psyche for it to work; you'll feel everything through it."
She carefully settled the dildo between Romana's legs, and Romana gasped as it clung to her, extending its base to cover her completely.
"Had a pair of psychic knickers once," River said with a wink. "Didn't leave my room for a week."
She slid to her knees before Romana and softly kissed the inside of her thigh, spreading Romana's legs apart with her thumbs at the creases of Romana's thighs, tracing the border of the dildo's covering. Romana shivered, and the dildo twitched upwards.
"Now you're getting it," River said, and took the shaft in her mouth.
Romana's face went slack. She exhaled in a stutter, suddenly gripping River's shoulders to steady herself as her legs wobbled.
"Oh. Oh, my," she said, blinking rapidly as River continued. "That's ... different."
River pulled back, tightening her lips round the tip of the dildo, sucking once, then releasing. "Isn't it? But I think you should let the Doctor have a go. He's remarkably skilled."
"If you must stop," Romana said dreamily, stroking River's hair. "Well, then, Doctor?"
"It would be my pleasure," he said, and knelt in front of Romana.
A lifetime ago, he'd dreamt of what this would be like, him and the not-quite-flesh hologram. At first, he thought he might reenact as many times as they'd been together, in each of their bodies. No matter which of him had been with her, he remembered her scent, the dawn filtering through her hair, carnelian and yellow; her body tumbling against his.
He'd given up when he came to his senses, and here with her now, he wondered if his mind had gone rambling again. But she smelled the same, and the curve of her breasts felt soft and warm on his palm, and he knew if he'd gone insane again, it didn't matter: he had her.
Her cock was already warm and slick from River's work, and he slid the dildo deep into his mouth, pressing against the shaft with the flat of his tongue. Romana had always had the most delicate moans, as if she feared anything louder might be inappropriate, but now, as the Doctor slid his lips along the dildo and pressed his palm between her legs, the moans were louder, longer, interspersed with panting breaths and the tightening grip of her fingers in his hair.
He withdrew to the head of the cock, massaging it with his tongue, slid back along the shaft, repeated the motions. Romana thrust slowly into his mouth as he moved, her cries sharpening.
"Oh," she said, breath rushing out of her so fast the Doctor felt a puff of air on his face. "River, River, what does this do when I ...?"
The Doctor lightened his touch, gliding along her so swiftly Romana couldn't thrust fast enough to keep up – and with a final grind of the heel of his hand between her legs, Romana shouted in ecstasy, fingers gripping the Doctor's head, her body tautening, then slumping over his.
The dildo pulsed rhythmically in his mouth, but unlike a real cock, released nothing else. He took his time pulling back from her, caressing her with his tongue as he moved until the shaft slipped out and dangled limply between her legs. He kissed the tender inside of her thigh.
"And now you know," said River.
"Indeed," Romana replied, helping the Doctor up, then drawing him to her for a kiss. She stroked his cheek, brushed her lips past his one last time, then pulled River close for the same. "I really must thank you both ... but which of you should I start with?"
River moved her lips along Romana's jawline, nipped her lightly at the neck. "Do you know one of the best things about using that toy?" she asked. "You're not a man. No refractory period."
"Mmm," Romana replied as River's mouth slid along her neck, along the sharp juts of her collarbone, down to the peak of a nipple. "I don't think that answers my question."
"Does this?" River drew back, put her hands on the Doctor's shoulders, and pushed him backwards on the bed.
"Hey!"
"Hush, sweetie." She crawled beside him and crushed his indignance with a kiss. Admittedly, he found it hard to stay indignant with two beautiful naked women nearby who clearly wanted to continue being naked with him for some time to come.
River turned to Romana. "I don't know about you, but I think the Doctor could use a very thorough shagging."
"I think you're right," Romana replied. She dropped on top of him, bracing herself with her hands, and licked a stripe from the middle of his chest to the side of his neck.
"That tickles!" he gasped, wriggling beneath her, and he could feel the temperature differential between Romana draped across half his body and River beside the other half, one cool, one warm, both solid and real even if one wasn't, not really.
They took turns with him: Romana methodically mapping a dotted line of kisses from throat, to jawbone, to lips, while River dipped her tongue inside his mouth, relinquishing him only when Romana was ready to take over. Romana rocked against him, and at his waist, beside his own erection, something twitched and hardened: the dildo, coming back to life.
The pressure of Romana's body on top of him wasn't enough, especially not with her cock rubbing over his abdomen, while his own received what he was certain was deliberately frustrating inattention. River's fingers danced along the rim of his hip, walking towards the centre but stopping just short of where he wanted them; instead, they tapped their way down to his inner thigh, tracing tight circles until – oh, yes, there, three short strokes the length of his scrotum, River's hand cupping and massaging his balls, and that was rather good, rather good indeed.
He arched into her touch and moaned when her hand glided further behind. He had strict rules about not begging in bed, rules River usually got him perilously close to breaking. With Romana still nibbling on his neck, he began to seriously consider an exception to the rule.
But she rolled off of him, leaving him chasing after her lips. She slicked something from a bottle onto her cock. River's hand strayed back to his thigh. And then Romana bent his legs, tilted them backwards, and very carefully, pushed her way inside him.
He breathed deeply, relaxed his body, let her slip all the way in.
They hadn't done this since before the war, but nearly everything was just as he remembered it: the sheen of sweat between her breasts, the pale hair dangling across his chest, the serene satisfaction across her face as she watched him unfold beneath her. Only Romana's own murmurs of pleasure from finally being able to feel her own work were new to him, and how delightful it was, after these many years, to find they could still surprise each other in bed.
She moved steadily within him, not too fast, not yet; another benefit of their years together, their shared understanding of each other's limits. River was learning them, too; her hand drifted upwards, fingertips grazing his cock, back and forth, until he was once again tempted to beg her for a firmer touch.
But she and Romana were in sync. River leaned upwards, traced Romana's lips with her tongue until Romana opened her mouth and accepted the kiss. Romana slowed for a moment, and pathetically, the Doctor realised he'd whimpered when Romana's rhythm faltered.
"Was that begging?" River asked, arching an eyebrow.
"I was not – I never –" River bent down, and agonisingly slowly, licked the circumference of his cock head. "Okay! Okay! Just this once!"
Romana laughed and speeded up. River lay back, wrapped her hand around the Doctor's cock, and began to move. And the Doctor, nearly overwhelmed with pleasure, tried to hang on as long as he could, knowing this might never happen again, not unless he was extraordinarily fortunate.
Romana's breath started to catch. The Doctor recognised the sounds; she was close to the edge again, the sensations filtered through the dildo still new enough to her that she'd misjudged how long it might take her to climax a second time.
He stroked her cheek with his palm and said, "Come here."
He met her halfway, drawing her closer as he brushed her lips with his, tasting her, kissing her as deeply as he could. She was made of memories, but he still wanted to remember her as she was now: her passion, her sense of adventure, her craving for him.
She gasped into his mouth and trembled. Within him, the dildo throbbed, vibrations rippling through him, until at last the waves overtook him as well.
He kissed her again, less urgently, and felt a smile on her lips.
"Was that thorough enough for you?" she asked as she leveraged herself back up and slowly withdrew from him.
River, still by his side, chuckled and wiped her hand on the bedsheet. "If it wasn't, sweetie, I'm sure we can arrange something else."
"All I'm saying," he murmured, his mind still pleasantly fuzzy at the edges, "is that when a man gets as old as I am, it's important to give him exactly what he wants without making him ask for it."
"Where's the fun in that?" River asked, stretching her legs and arms, long and lean. "Although, speaking of waiting ..."
Romana dropped beside her, motioning to the dildo, and River obligingly pressed three points on it and twisted it off. "Thank you," Romana said, flipping onto her stomach and casually flicking at one of River's nipples. "You've been awfully patient, River."
"I'm told good things come to those who wait. And I hate waiting, but in this case, I think it'll be worth it."
"It will," said Romana, bending to kiss her. She slipped her hand between River's legs, fingers brushing the Doctor's, already stroking.
* * *
They left River in her cell the next morning, after Romana finished tweaking the Doctor's programs for cloaking the TARDIS from Stormcage's camera system and motion detectors.
"I assume you'll be visiting again in the future," she said. "Or possibly the past."
River kissed Romana goodbye tenderly, smoothing down her hair. "I know I should apologise for bringing you back, but ..."
"There's no need to apologise, River."
"And you," River said, grabbing the Doctor's lapels and pulling him next to her, "you need to promise to take good care of her."
"Wouldn't dream of anything else," he said.
"Good." The kiss he received was harder, more passionate. "I'm going to hold you to that."
She swept out of the TARDIS without looking back.
* * *
The Doctor watched the door for a long time before noticing that Romana had dematerialised the TARDIS.
"She knows something," he said. "You didn't tell her anything, did you?"
"Not a word."
"She seemed awfully forceful, didn't she? More forceful than usual, anyway?"
"I think she's genuinely concerned for my well-being," Romana said. "It's rather sweet."
He spun on his heel and faced the console. "Well, let's not disappoint her." He typed a string of numbers and symbols on the keyboard, triple-checked the time/space coordinates on the monitor. He still needed to contact CAL and configure the TARDIS to download and bytecheck Romana, but that wouldn't take long. Not with Romana's help, anyway.
There was a twinge in his chest, like someone was pressing above his left heart with their finger, jabbing hard. It was an old, familiar pain, and the ache never dulled no matter how many times he went through this.
Usually, though, he didn't have to lose them more than once.
He reached for Romana and wrapped his arms round her. She still felt as real as the day she'd appeared in the Cloister Room, and if a man was the sum of his memories, she was one of the realest of all.
"All I want is for you to be happy, Romana," he said.
"I will be," she said. "Wherever I am."
Characters/Pairing(s): Eleven/River/Romana II, Eleven/River, implied Four/Romana II and Eight/Romana II
Rating: Adult
Word count: 7,800
Spoilers: none
Contains: pegging
Summary: The Doctor doesn't want to be alone. River doesn't want him to be alone. But he never expected her to fix the problem like this.
Betas:
platypus and prof_pangaeaDisclaimer: Not mine, obviously.
Author's Notes: Fic by request for
lizbee and violetisblue. Contains some content from the LKH video prequel.::xposted to
spoiler_song, dwfiction, rivereffinsong, and dwfiction, and archived at Teaspoon and AO3Romana thrust smoothly into the Doctor's arse. She gripped his sides and leaned as far across his stomach as she could. Her blonde hair whispered against his skin, tickled the edges of his ribcage.
River dragged his head back by his fringe, exposing the tender skin at his neck for her to worry with her teeth. She stroked his cock steadily, pressure building with every motion.
The air smelled of musk and sweat and electrostatics, an ozone tang where ions had broken apart and come together to make something that shouldn't exist; but it did, thanks to River and the TARDIS and his own memories, locked away and asleep in his mind. She existed. And she was in bed with him right now.
So many bodies ago, he'd once said, a man is the sum of his memories; a Time Lord even more so. All he had left of them were memories; memories and those ghastly screams he'd heard on House, the panicked nightmares of the long-dead.
The TARDIS, at last, was safe, her parasite destroyed. She'd settled back into her accustomed body, lights shimmering and console humming with satisfaction beneath his fingertips while she took him where he needed to be next.
The home of a ghost-to-be. River's cell.
She had died before, too, even she didn't know it yet, but at least she was here, now, drowsily rubbing her eyes in the quarter-power light Stormcage used at night.
"And me in my skivvies instead of lingerie," she said. "You should have called first."
"I'm just here to talk, River."
She yawned, stretched out her hand to pull him down beside her. "We'll see."
The synthetic wool of her blanket made his skin itch, but River was warm and plush beside him. Lying here talking to her for a little while couldn't hurt, probably. The TARDIS had brought him here, after all, and probably not to notice the way River curved her body to match his, or the way her index finger lightly scraped the nape of his neck. Not that he was noticing. Probably.
"For someone who came here to talk, you're not doing an awful lot of talking," she said. "That's fine. We can lie here until you change your mind." She wriggled under the blanket, curling tighter to him, her lips grazing his cheek.
"The only water in the forest is the river," he said. "Idris – the TARDIS – she told Rory, 'the only water in the forest is the river.' Does that mean anything to you, River?"
"No." Her voice vibrated on his skin, and he suppressed a shiver. Probably he ought to sit up instead of lying here next to her. Probably. Instead, he shifted to his side and draped his arm over her blanket-covered waist.
"Are you absolutely certain? Because the TARDIS – she's not always the most linear thinker, which is exactly what you want in a time machine right up to the point she's incarnated in a patchwork woman who speaks in riddles you have to interpret if you want to live. Which is not the sort of thing I thought I'd say someday, but you know, things happen. And your name, as you may have noticed, is 'River.' So I thought maybe, just maybe, there might be a connection there."
She folded back his hair, kissed his forehead. "Just coincidence, my love. I'm sorry."
There was no tremor in her voice, no twitch in the shadows folded across her face, to indicate a lie. And the touch of her lips to his, the sweet tip of her tongue tracing the lines of his mouth, that felt like the truth.
In bed, much later, watching dawn filter through the frizz of River's hair, he told her about uncovering this final indignity to his people, the cacophony that had called to him, that had made his heart swell with hope he knew he shouldn't feel and didn't deserve.
"I'm so thick sometimes. Old and stupid and thick as treacle," he muttered.
She squeezed his hand, her fingers laced with his. "You're really not, you know. Most of the time."
"I was this time. I let myself believe in something I shouldn't have because I wanted it so very badly."
"You never know. There might still be someone out there."
"All things die, River. And ... they're long dead now."
"All things do die," she said. "But all things can be remembered, too. You can't make yourself forget them just because their memory hurts."
"I don't want to forget them. But no good comes of thinking of them, either. They just scrape at me. They've worn me away."
"You can't let yourself think like that. You did what had to be done. Anyone would have done the same."
His face hardened. "No, they wouldn't have. There was just me. Me and – oh, it doesn't matter. She wasn't around for the end anyway."
"She?"
He flipped the covers back and fished for his trousers, inside-out in a lump beside the bed. "I'd better be getting back. Pond'll be waking up soon, and I don't fancy explaining why I've been out all night.'"
"You haven't answered my question. Who was 'she'?"
"Leave it, River."
"If you insist," she said, sighing. "For now."
River always did drag him like a lodestone, curving him round her magnetic field until he could no longer resist her draw. He didn't tell the Ponds that part of the time he'd said he was looking for their daughter, she was right there beside him, alive, unharmed, old enough to know better, yet still warming his bed.
Having exhausted his leads on the Silence – really, there were only so many times you could blow up a Cyberfleet and expect cooperation – asking River for help had seemed like the obvious solution: she was the daughter in question, and surely she knew where she'd been when her parents were seeking her. A quick note to the warden – Dr. Song is needed for an urgent furlough investigating the Lost Ark of Leadworth, don't worry, have her back in a jiffy or a fortnight, whichever comes first, sincerely, Dr. J. Smith – and no one would miss River if she disappeared from her cell for a while, which she did, one hand on her diary while the other loosened his bow tie.
But he'd underestimated how well he, or perhaps those who'd raised her, had taught her to keep her secrets through avoidance, misdirection, and outright lies; no amount of enticing her with places she shouldn't be and things they shouldn't do would convince her to give him more than that enigmatic smile, and no amount of sex seemed to do the trick either. (Not that he was complaining about that.) She disappeared in the TARDIS for hours, whispering to the ship instead of him, and he'd find distractions randomly placed in his way: a heating system breakdown that had coincidentally required huddling for warmth; a jigsaw of Lake Silencio, its pieces scattered across five different rooms.
Today, his chosen bribe for River was fat and flaky croissants, still warm from a boulangerie in the 7e arrondissement, pots of marmalade and chocolate spread beside them. Something simple this time, at least compared to taking her to see the private library of the Emperor of Grzh without the emperor's permission; perhaps this, finally, would do the trick.
He found her seated on a stone bench in the Cloister Room, her body stiff, eyes shut tight in concentration.
"River?"
"Ssh. Almost done."
He set the tray beside her. Gradually, her fingers pried themselves away from their grip on the edge of the bench; she blinked, slowly.
"Did it work? It felt like it worked," she said. She sprang to her feet, ducked behind columns, searching.
"Did what work? Come and have a croissant; they're scrumptious."
Ivy and wisteria rustled at the far end of the room. A damp and loamy perfume filled the air. There was a shuffling in the distance: hesitant footsteps sliding across the stone floor, followed by the rapid tap of River's boots running to meet whatever had turned up.
The Doctor put down his croissant and licked a pastry flake from his thumb. "River? What on earth are you doing back there?"
"Come and see."
River constantly surprised him. Sometimes they were terrible surprises, like her infuriating delay at Demon's Run; sometimes they were so welcome he didn't know how he'd lived without them. But this time, she'd outdone herself.
Standing next to her, swaying unsteadily in a pleated red gown, was Romana.
"Hello, Doctor," she said.
Hello. Not you monster, you killed us all, didn't you, or oh, of course, you must have used a temporomandibular whosiwhatsis tuned at exactly 53 nanohertz to extract me from E-space, about time, really. Just an ordinary "hello," quiet and small as the woman wavering in front of him.
"Romana," he said. He could hardly breathe. Her name evaporated from him like a sigh. "It can't be. Is it really ...?"
"No," she said. "Not really."
She flickered for a moment. Not faltering, not leaning on River for support: a jitter and crackle of light, and a wisteria silhouette behind her chest.
"Still buffering," she said. "I should be complete in a few minutes."
Gooseflesh prickled across his arms. The wavering, the flicker, the flowers where Romana's hearts should have been. River tangled with him on her narrow Stormcage bed, her words whispering in his ear: all things can be remembered.
"River," he said, his voice cold. "I'd like a word. Now."
"I thought you might," she said. She led Romana to the bench, made sure she was comfortable, and followed the Doctor to the hallway.
"River, what have you done?"
"I should think it'd be obvious. You were lonely. You were upset. You needed your people. And the TARDIS knew what to do. She just needed my help to focus enough mental energy to create the construct."
"You keep trying to distract me, River, and why you picked this distraction, this particular distraction ... River, do you know why the TARDIS knew what to do?" He tried to push down his rage, swallow the voice inside him that just wanted to yell, keep yelling, until River hadn't done what she'd done. "I did something, once. And I'm not proud of it, but I did it, and it's done, and I haven't looked at her – it – since I did it." He wiped his eyes. "It wasn't a good time in my life, River. I'd gone a bit mad. And my people, we had something similar, although that wasn't where I ... anyway, never mind where I got the idea, the point is, I was on my own because I didn't want to ruin anyone else. So I made her. To talk to."
"Just to talk to? She's awfully attractive for someone you only wanted to talk to."
"Yes, just to talk to! Not that it's any of your affair whether we'd have done anything else, and I hadn't got the quantum-locking tuned quite right for solidity anyway, and I'd gone a bit mad, did I mention that?"
"You shouldn't be alone," River said fiercely. "I can't be with you forever. No one can, except her. You've done so much for me. And if you'd seen yourself that night in my cell, when you told me about your people ... you'd have done the same."
"River, River, River. I'd already tried that," he said. "I made a Romana from my memories and her bond with the TARDIS, and then I unmade her, because I came to my senses long enough to realise what I'd done."
"And yet you didn't delete her program. How strange."
"She was practically alive. I couldn't be with her, but I couldn't kill her, either. You have to understand, River: she's alive enough to know what's going on, but not enough to be alive. She can never leave the TARDIS. She's stuck with daft old me, rattling round this ship, forever."
"Being stuck with you isn't the worst fate I can imagine, unless you keep being this stubborn."
"River! I had the right to try to save her. I didn't have the right to keep her. Can't you see the difference?"
Her brow crinkled, and she closed her eyes for a moment. "You never understand, do you, just how far people will go to show you how important you are to them? That you're worthy of their love?" She slapped the door switch, and the mossy scent of the Cloister Room wafted into the corridor. "Go on, then, tell her she's a mistake and you don't need her. You did it once before; you can do it again. I'll be in our room, packing."
She was halfway round the corner by the time he called out, "All you brought was your diary, River! Come back here!" But the only sound he heard was the tapping of her bootsoles, softer and softer, until there was nothing.
"That went well," said Romana. She was holding a croissant in both hands, sniffing at it. "Butter, butter, butter, and just enough flour to hold it together, I should think. And you brought marmalade! Pity River isn't here to enjoy it."
"There's no need to rub it in."
"Oh, I think there is." She dropped the croissant back on the plate, scattering pastry shards across the tea tray. "She was only trying to help. And it was terribly wrong of you to make me and then dismiss me before we even had a chance to talk. I see you've regenerated, by the way. Hopefully just the once. You were always so careless with your bodies."
"Just once, yes, and I'll have you know it wasn't due to carelessness."
"That's good." She draped blonde hair over one shoulder, leaned down to inhale the scent of the croissants again. "I do wish I could do more than smell these, but I suppose even the TARDIS' holographic constructs have their limitations. Is this even my memory of what a croissant smells like, or is it your memory of that little boulangerie we went to?"
"I don't know." He reached for her tentatively, hand stopping just shy of her shoulder, then skimming it with his fingertips. The raw silk crepe scraped the pads of his fingers, as it always had, and beneath it, Romana's shoulder felt solid. Alive.
He let his hand fall. "River shouldn't have done this."
"But she did. And don't tell me you're not happy to see me. I may only be a three-dimensional quantum-locked holographic construct, Doctor, but I'm not stupid."
"A hologram based on our memories? No, I should think 'stupid' is the last thing you'd be."
"Speaking of memory," Romana said, "there are holes in mine. Uncomfortably large ones. Can you explain, for example, why I can't remember how the war ended? That's not the sort of thing I'd tend to forget. I was in that prison cell, and after that ... there's nothing."
"We lost," he said quietly, then jumped to his feet and started pacing beside the bench. His fingers twitched. "We don't have to discuss this now, you know. If you're going to stay, we've all the time in the world. Whole galaxies and universes of time."
"We lost."
"Yes."
"Oh, my."
She'd gone pale, but the cracked stone walls weren't bleeding through her this time. Not a glitch in her projection, then.
"How many of us – are there any of us left? It wouldn't be like the Daleks to leave survivors, but if they needed us ... and oh, oh no, how far have they got? Tell me they're contained."
"As contained as they ever are," he said. "We've had a few skirmishes. But they didn't take over Gallifrey, if that's what you're asking."
"I suppose that's something," she replied. "You didn't answer my other question, Doctor. How many of us are left?"
How could he tell her? It's just me. Just me and my memories, rattling round a great big blue box, forever and ever.
Romana stuck out a foot to catch him, and waited until he stopped pacing. "Just tell me this: am I alive?"
Fingers twitching, rolling over each other, a jittery ballet. He realised what he was doing, stilled his hands, and said, "I don't know, Romana."
The Citadel prison was the last place he'd seen her. He didn't count the drone carrying her that had punched a hole straight through to E-space, neatly stitching the tear shut behind itself.
The tidy, cheerless grey of her cell, more spacious and clean than its neighbours, but only because this one held the deposed president of Gallifrey. Romana's head had been bent over her journal as she tapped out words she never shared with him. The delicate flick of her index finger, tucking straws of blonde hair behind her ear.
"I'll keep trying, Romana," he'd said. "He's already agreed to exile instead of execution. I won't give up until he lets you go."
Tap. Tap. Tap. Still writing something he'd never know; her memoirs, perhaps, or equally well what she'd had for lunch.
"He won't," she'd replied, head down, focused on her datapad. "He's completely mad."
"There must be something I can do!"
"You've more important things to worry about now," she'd said, and when she'd looked at him, there'd almost, almost been a smile on her face. "Thank you for everything you've done. If I can come back someday, I will."
River was still in his room when he finally retired for the evening, but she turned her back to him in bed, hand cupped over her diary while she attacked it with a Biro. She shook her right hand, flexing her fingers, then returned to work.
"River." He kissed the hard edge of her shoulder. "I'm glad you're here."
River scribbled a few more words, stabbed the page with the Biro one last time, and laid it in the crease of the book. "So, I'm forgiven?"
"You still shouldn't have done it –"
"Ah." She picked up the pen again, hovered over the page.
"– but you meant well."
The pen dropped again, and she flopped onto her back to face him. "I think that counts as forgiveness."
"I'll always forgive you, River. But you understand why I turned her program off before, don't you?"
"Yes," she said, "but it sounds like you could have used a companion at the time."
"Well, I did say I'd gone a bit mad. Having someone else around might have helped, but that's the sort of thing one only realises in hindsight."
"All I wanted was to save you from being alone," she said, stroking his cheek, "but I'm sorry I upset you."
He turned and kissed her palm. "Thank you, River. Apology accepted."
"She's an interesting one, that Romana of yours. I caught a few glimpses of her while the TARDIS and I were connected. You two certainly did get up to some trouble."
"You should have seen her when we first met. All stiff and proper, completely convinced I was doing everything wrong."
"You probably were."
"'Wrong' sounds so judgemental, River. I have my own unique methods that have served me well over the years."
She grinned up at him. "Definitely wrong, then."
"You stop that," he said. "You've been very difficult today, very difficult indeed."
"Tell me you don't like it." She pushed back the tweedy shoulder of his jacket, helping him shrug it down his arms.
"In the morning, you're going to tell me where to find you. Don't think I've forgotten about that."
"I know you haven't, but I can't help you."
"Not even if I ..." He listened for her gasp at his touch. Ah, there it was, a swift sigh and puff of breath on his neck.
"No," River murmured, and drew him closer. "But you can keep trying if you like."
The TARDIS' landing on Lobellia the next day was uncommonly smooth, her usual thunk replaced with a muffled whisper.
"I spent yesterday re-tuning the landing avionics," Romana said. "Remarkably pleasant compared to researching Gallifrey and the Time War in the TARDIS databanks."
"I think," the Doctor replied, quickly tallying the number of ways he could permanently distract Romana from the subject, and arriving at zero, but worth an attempt, "this is hardly a suitable topic for our picnic. River, do you have the hamper?"
"Putting it outside now," she said, throwing open the TARDIS doors to reveal teal meadows dotted with white and butter-yellow flowers.
He offered Romana his arm, and though she fixed him with a stern look, she looped her arm below his, resting her hand on his bicep.
She ate nothing, but admired River's choice in cheese and fruit, praising her for picking wine-red dried figs from Telamos IV instead of the inferior green ones. She relaxed on the tartan blanket they'd laid just outside the doorway, plucking blades of grass and twining them into a braid. And finally, carefully, she picked her way to the point where a sharp line cleaved the meadow and circumscribed the TARDIS. Breathed deeply, sniffed the air, spent a minute watching a family of squat river-horses sipping at the edge of a pool at the base of the hill.
"The air is quite refreshing," she said. "I think I'll enjoy it for a while. You two should go find some trouble to get into; no need to worry about me."
"That hardly seems fair, Romana," said the Doctor.
"It isn't," she replied, "but it's reality, at least until I run some more feasibility calculations on portable holographic projection devices. Go on. I assure you, I can entertain myself."
"If you're sure, then," River said, hand hovering over the plate of figs, ready to pack it back in the hamper.
Romana smiled and clasped her hands together. "Please. Go. Besides, you'll need someone to rescue you later; I'm certain of it."
"How well you know him," River said.
The rescue from the Lobellian royal dungeons took place approximately thirteen and a quarter hours later, when a blue box materialised in two cells, each barely big enough to hold it, and disappeared with the cells' occupants.
"Honestly," the Doctor said, indignantly wiping cobwebs from his jacket, "suggest the Peasant Oppression Monument could do with a little less peasant oppression, and suddenly everyone's a critic."
River covered Romana's hand with hers and said, "Thank you for coming to our rescue. I'm sure he'll appreciate it once he's finished moaning about police intolerance. How did you know to come looking for us?"
"You'd been gone a while, so I had the TARDIS scan for human and Time Lord life signs. Once you'd been still for more than two hours, I assumed you'd been captured."
"That's a very cheeky assumption," the Doctor said. "We could have been, I don't know, sleeping. Or participating in a contest to see who could stand still the longest."
"Or, more likely, captured."
"Aren't you supposed to be running some calculations instead of insulting me?"
"I don't believe those are mutually exclusive," Romana replied. "The TARDIS is running my calculations right now. I'm afraid they're not terribly promising, but one never knows."
"Oh, Romana," said River, "I'm sorry."
"It's all right. I can occupy myself here if I must. There's a magnificent library, and the TARDIS could use some upgrades. In fact, given your association with the TARDIS, if you'd like to help ..."
The Doctor ran a hand through his hair, straightened his jacket. "In that case, I'll leave you two to it," he said.
He reviewed Romana's work in his laboratory. It probably didn't count as spying if she were likely to ask him to review them himself anyway, and besides, they were calculations he should have run himself before creating her template in the first place.
Not his finest moment, that template. Pathological loneliness and temporary insanity made a poor combination, even if his hearts had fluttered to see her that first time he'd summoned the hologram, and every time since. She looked the same. Sounded the same. Needled him in that same way that both prickled and delighted him.
He wondered if she tasted the same, if every memory of her he had – and every memory of him she'd acquired when they travelled together – had survived the TARDIS' transfer process.
And if she ever looked at him again the way she had the last time he'd seen her, the real her, how could he know if she was remembering her fondness for him, or if his own memories were at work instead?
She deserved more. Memories they could both be certain of; memories she'd made on her own.
He rolled his shoulders, tried to shrug off the distractions. He could be a terrific planner when he tried, but grasping the consequences of his planning wasn't always his strong suit. Now that he was face-to-face with those consequences, quite literally, he needed to deal with them.
But the figures the TARDIS showed him stubbornly refused to cooperate. Brains were optimised for memories, a Time Lord's especially so. Microcircuitry wasn't, and Romana's precise, multidimensional calculations bore that out. They needed massive databanks to store her.
She might set foot on alien ground, taste the tang of alien air, appreciate the twin suns of Telamos IV as they set for the week – but all that would happen within the safe radius of the TARDIS' external projectors unless he found a way to cram a planet's worth of storage into something Romana could carry in her pocket.
"All right, old man," he said, "you know she doesn't make mistakes, but maybe just this once she's forgotten to carry the one. Try again, and if that doesn't work, you're going to keep on trying until it does."
It didn't.
Days passed. Romana cheerfully helped pilot them from planet to planet, handling remote research and still more rescues the Doctor grudgingly acknowledged as occasionally necessary; River cheerfully flirted with them both; and the Doctor somewhat less cheerfully kept digging for solutions for his two unsolvable problems: a woman he couldn't keep, and a child he couldn't locate.
He'd always been a keen observer, and he spent his downtime watching his two shipmates, hoping there'd be a clue in the way Romana squinted at the transducer coils, or in the cant of River's head as she scribbled in her diary. Instead, all he learned was that he'd apparently been quite neglectful of proper transducer maintenance, that River was remarkably deft at deflecting questions about what she transcribed, and that the way her fingers lingered at the curve of Romana's neck could inspire some very inappropriate thoughts.
They were locked in stasis. Romana, although she continued to tweak her calculations, showed no other outward signs of frustration with her fate, and River steadfastly continued to refuse to give him any details of her whereabouts. With the two of them seemingly content to bob along in the water as long as necessary, it was up to the Doctor to nudge them towards shore, if he could only come up with the right prod.
Because he was chewing over that very problem late one night while simultaneously analysing Romana's latest transducer enhancement, he let the telephone ring through to the answerphone. Twice lately the calls had been someone trying to sell aluminium siding anyway, which would frankly have looked ridiculous on the TARDIS even if he could have got the right shade of blue.
This time, when the answerphone grabbed the call, he recognised the voice immediately, and froze at the console.
You said you'd find my baby. You said you'd find Melody. Have you found her? Because you promised. I know she's going to be okay, I know she'll grow up to be River, but that's not the point. I don't want to miss all those years, you know? I can't stand it. I can't. Please, Doctor, please. Okay. Phone me back when you know something. Please, Doctor, at least do that. As soon as you know.
When the machine clicked off, he was still standing in place, staring blankly at the dials below him. How much time had he wasted waiting for River to help? And how much of that had he let himself waste because deep down, he knew she wouldn't help, but he wanted her around anyway?
And then there were the living, or living enough, consequences of having let River stay: Romana, whom he'd set free if he could, but who'd break his hearts if she left.
He reached for the erase button, but stopped himself before pressing it. Here, at last, was what he needed to lead River where he wanted her to go.
He played River her mother's anguished telephone message and watched her face crumple.
"I made a promise, River," he said. "I promised my friends I'd bring their baby home to them."
"You made a promise you can't keep." She brushed a finger past the corner of one eye.
"I can keep it if you just tell me where you are!"
"Don't ask me that again. I'm where I'm supposed to be. Where I'm supposed to be then. Where I'm supposed to be now." She softened. "But they haven't lost me. That's a promise I can keep."
"River. This is it. If you won't help me, I'm taking you back to Stormcage."
"I'd have needed to go back eventually anyway. Besides, the guards get lonely without me."
He tapped the typewriter keys on the console and spun a dial knob beside it. Stormcage it was, then.
River slammed the dial with her hand. "Wait. I can't tell you where to find me, but give me tonight to say goodbye, and I'll give you this." She caressed the nape of his neck, leaned in to whisper a date in his ear. "You might find The Leadworth Chronicle particularly interesting that day."
"That's it? A story in a newspaper? Why didn't you tell me this earlier, River?"
"I shouldn't have even told you that, and you know it. You set the rules and then expect me to break them when it's convenient for you? I don't think so."
"You break them when it's convenient for you. Like 'don't root through the TARDIS databanks to find my abandoned projects.'"
"I can't believe you're calling Romana an 'abandoned project.' She's the only other Time Lord left."
"No, I'm the only Time Lord left. Romana is ... a ghost."
"There's no crime in wanting to save someone you love." She laughed. "Or maybe there is. But that, my love, means spoilers."
He let her words tumble round his head for a moment, leaves sifting and billowing over each other until they drifted together in a pattern. Save someone you love.
"Yes," he said at last. "I'm afraid I've got spoilers as well."
He asked Romana to meet him in the small sitting room, the one with Chinoiserie wallpaper and the comfortable but tattered crimson paisley settee. Romana walked in moments after he arrived; she could have just had the TARDIS reformulate her in place, but he'd told her how unsettling he found it to have her materialise like his ship. It only reminded him of what she was, and who she wasn't.
"I've tried, Romana," he said. "I've gone over your figures dozens of ways, but the results are always the same."
"I imagine they are. They were my calculations to begin with." She drew her knees up on the cushion, circled them with her arms. "But I appreciate your thoroughness."
"If I'd thought for a moment that someone else would try to resurrect you like this, I'd have erased the program."
"No, you wouldn't have."
"I'd have thought about it."
"When River was re-forming me," said Romana, "I got the impression something had gone terribly wrong for you. She had so much regret in her. I think she still does. But she only wanted to help."
"She didn't tell you what happened?"
Romana shook her head.
The Doctor shifted closer to her and took her hands in his. "I got a message from the Corsair. A distress call, only it turned out to be a trap for a creature that ate TARDISes. It had been luring our people to their deaths for years, as if there were enough of us to spare.
"All those screams, Romana. You can't imagine it. The death cries of so many Time Lords, calling out one last time, with no one there to help them, not even me. And I don't know whether I'm grateful I didn't hear your voice, or whether I wish I had, because then at least I'd have known what became of you.
"You're lost. Somewhere out there, I hope in E-space, I hope still as alive as you ever were. Telling some poor sod how very wrong he is, and doing it flawlessly. I want to believe you're out there, and that you're happy, because I can't bring you back. Not without them, and they're long gone."
"You've done what you can," she said. "I've had these extra days with you and River, and they've been wonderful. But I can't be happy trapped in here. I'm not real." She squeezed his hands. "I think you should delete my program."
"But that's why I asked to see you, Romana. Because I can give you a choice: I won't just turn off your hologram this time, not unless it's what you really want. There's a place I can take you – a place where you'll be able to breathe fresh air and walk on the grass, or at least what feels like it. Have every kind of adventure you can imagine, literally. You'll have a life, a proper life."
"That's impossible."
"No, just incredibly unlikely."
"There must be a catch. There's always a catch with things like this."
"There is," he said. "You mustn't tell River where I'm taking you."
She plucked at a gold thread, loose at the edge of the cushion piping, wound it round her finger. "And why's that?"
"Because she's there now, only she doesn't know it yet."
The Doctor was unsurprised to discover that River's idea of "goodbye" involved his bedroom, Romana, and a souvenir River had picked up on their trip to Alviya.
She withdrew the translucent dildo from a shopping bag and gestured to Romana. "It's slightly psychic," she said. "I think you've enough of a psyche for it to work; you'll feel everything through it."
She carefully settled the dildo between Romana's legs, and Romana gasped as it clung to her, extending its base to cover her completely.
"Had a pair of psychic knickers once," River said with a wink. "Didn't leave my room for a week."
She slid to her knees before Romana and softly kissed the inside of her thigh, spreading Romana's legs apart with her thumbs at the creases of Romana's thighs, tracing the border of the dildo's covering. Romana shivered, and the dildo twitched upwards.
"Now you're getting it," River said, and took the shaft in her mouth.
Romana's face went slack. She exhaled in a stutter, suddenly gripping River's shoulders to steady herself as her legs wobbled.
"Oh. Oh, my," she said, blinking rapidly as River continued. "That's ... different."
River pulled back, tightening her lips round the tip of the dildo, sucking once, then releasing. "Isn't it? But I think you should let the Doctor have a go. He's remarkably skilled."
"If you must stop," Romana said dreamily, stroking River's hair. "Well, then, Doctor?"
"It would be my pleasure," he said, and knelt in front of Romana.
A lifetime ago, he'd dreamt of what this would be like, him and the not-quite-flesh hologram. At first, he thought he might reenact as many times as they'd been together, in each of their bodies. No matter which of him had been with her, he remembered her scent, the dawn filtering through her hair, carnelian and yellow; her body tumbling against his.
He'd given up when he came to his senses, and here with her now, he wondered if his mind had gone rambling again. But she smelled the same, and the curve of her breasts felt soft and warm on his palm, and he knew if he'd gone insane again, it didn't matter: he had her.
Her cock was already warm and slick from River's work, and he slid the dildo deep into his mouth, pressing against the shaft with the flat of his tongue. Romana had always had the most delicate moans, as if she feared anything louder might be inappropriate, but now, as the Doctor slid his lips along the dildo and pressed his palm between her legs, the moans were louder, longer, interspersed with panting breaths and the tightening grip of her fingers in his hair.
He withdrew to the head of the cock, massaging it with his tongue, slid back along the shaft, repeated the motions. Romana thrust slowly into his mouth as he moved, her cries sharpening.
"Oh," she said, breath rushing out of her so fast the Doctor felt a puff of air on his face. "River, River, what does this do when I ...?"
The Doctor lightened his touch, gliding along her so swiftly Romana couldn't thrust fast enough to keep up – and with a final grind of the heel of his hand between her legs, Romana shouted in ecstasy, fingers gripping the Doctor's head, her body tautening, then slumping over his.
The dildo pulsed rhythmically in his mouth, but unlike a real cock, released nothing else. He took his time pulling back from her, caressing her with his tongue as he moved until the shaft slipped out and dangled limply between her legs. He kissed the tender inside of her thigh.
"And now you know," said River.
"Indeed," Romana replied, helping the Doctor up, then drawing him to her for a kiss. She stroked his cheek, brushed her lips past his one last time, then pulled River close for the same. "I really must thank you both ... but which of you should I start with?"
River moved her lips along Romana's jawline, nipped her lightly at the neck. "Do you know one of the best things about using that toy?" she asked. "You're not a man. No refractory period."
"Mmm," Romana replied as River's mouth slid along her neck, along the sharp juts of her collarbone, down to the peak of a nipple. "I don't think that answers my question."
"Does this?" River drew back, put her hands on the Doctor's shoulders, and pushed him backwards on the bed.
"Hey!"
"Hush, sweetie." She crawled beside him and crushed his indignance with a kiss. Admittedly, he found it hard to stay indignant with two beautiful naked women nearby who clearly wanted to continue being naked with him for some time to come.
River turned to Romana. "I don't know about you, but I think the Doctor could use a very thorough shagging."
"I think you're right," Romana replied. She dropped on top of him, bracing herself with her hands, and licked a stripe from the middle of his chest to the side of his neck.
"That tickles!" he gasped, wriggling beneath her, and he could feel the temperature differential between Romana draped across half his body and River beside the other half, one cool, one warm, both solid and real even if one wasn't, not really.
They took turns with him: Romana methodically mapping a dotted line of kisses from throat, to jawbone, to lips, while River dipped her tongue inside his mouth, relinquishing him only when Romana was ready to take over. Romana rocked against him, and at his waist, beside his own erection, something twitched and hardened: the dildo, coming back to life.
The pressure of Romana's body on top of him wasn't enough, especially not with her cock rubbing over his abdomen, while his own received what he was certain was deliberately frustrating inattention. River's fingers danced along the rim of his hip, walking towards the centre but stopping just short of where he wanted them; instead, they tapped their way down to his inner thigh, tracing tight circles until – oh, yes, there, three short strokes the length of his scrotum, River's hand cupping and massaging his balls, and that was rather good, rather good indeed.
He arched into her touch and moaned when her hand glided further behind. He had strict rules about not begging in bed, rules River usually got him perilously close to breaking. With Romana still nibbling on his neck, he began to seriously consider an exception to the rule.
But she rolled off of him, leaving him chasing after her lips. She slicked something from a bottle onto her cock. River's hand strayed back to his thigh. And then Romana bent his legs, tilted them backwards, and very carefully, pushed her way inside him.
He breathed deeply, relaxed his body, let her slip all the way in.
They hadn't done this since before the war, but nearly everything was just as he remembered it: the sheen of sweat between her breasts, the pale hair dangling across his chest, the serene satisfaction across her face as she watched him unfold beneath her. Only Romana's own murmurs of pleasure from finally being able to feel her own work were new to him, and how delightful it was, after these many years, to find they could still surprise each other in bed.
She moved steadily within him, not too fast, not yet; another benefit of their years together, their shared understanding of each other's limits. River was learning them, too; her hand drifted upwards, fingertips grazing his cock, back and forth, until he was once again tempted to beg her for a firmer touch.
But she and Romana were in sync. River leaned upwards, traced Romana's lips with her tongue until Romana opened her mouth and accepted the kiss. Romana slowed for a moment, and pathetically, the Doctor realised he'd whimpered when Romana's rhythm faltered.
"Was that begging?" River asked, arching an eyebrow.
"I was not – I never –" River bent down, and agonisingly slowly, licked the circumference of his cock head. "Okay! Okay! Just this once!"
Romana laughed and speeded up. River lay back, wrapped her hand around the Doctor's cock, and began to move. And the Doctor, nearly overwhelmed with pleasure, tried to hang on as long as he could, knowing this might never happen again, not unless he was extraordinarily fortunate.
Romana's breath started to catch. The Doctor recognised the sounds; she was close to the edge again, the sensations filtered through the dildo still new enough to her that she'd misjudged how long it might take her to climax a second time.
He stroked her cheek with his palm and said, "Come here."
He met her halfway, drawing her closer as he brushed her lips with his, tasting her, kissing her as deeply as he could. She was made of memories, but he still wanted to remember her as she was now: her passion, her sense of adventure, her craving for him.
She gasped into his mouth and trembled. Within him, the dildo throbbed, vibrations rippling through him, until at last the waves overtook him as well.
He kissed her again, less urgently, and felt a smile on her lips.
"Was that thorough enough for you?" she asked as she leveraged herself back up and slowly withdrew from him.
River, still by his side, chuckled and wiped her hand on the bedsheet. "If it wasn't, sweetie, I'm sure we can arrange something else."
"All I'm saying," he murmured, his mind still pleasantly fuzzy at the edges, "is that when a man gets as old as I am, it's important to give him exactly what he wants without making him ask for it."
"Where's the fun in that?" River asked, stretching her legs and arms, long and lean. "Although, speaking of waiting ..."
Romana dropped beside her, motioning to the dildo, and River obligingly pressed three points on it and twisted it off. "Thank you," Romana said, flipping onto her stomach and casually flicking at one of River's nipples. "You've been awfully patient, River."
"I'm told good things come to those who wait. And I hate waiting, but in this case, I think it'll be worth it."
"It will," said Romana, bending to kiss her. She slipped her hand between River's legs, fingers brushing the Doctor's, already stroking.
They left River in her cell the next morning, after Romana finished tweaking the Doctor's programs for cloaking the TARDIS from Stormcage's camera system and motion detectors.
"I assume you'll be visiting again in the future," she said. "Or possibly the past."
River kissed Romana goodbye tenderly, smoothing down her hair. "I know I should apologise for bringing you back, but ..."
"There's no need to apologise, River."
"And you," River said, grabbing the Doctor's lapels and pulling him next to her, "you need to promise to take good care of her."
"Wouldn't dream of anything else," he said.
"Good." The kiss he received was harder, more passionate. "I'm going to hold you to that."
She swept out of the TARDIS without looking back.
The Doctor watched the door for a long time before noticing that Romana had dematerialised the TARDIS.
"She knows something," he said. "You didn't tell her anything, did you?"
"Not a word."
"She seemed awfully forceful, didn't she? More forceful than usual, anyway?"
"I think she's genuinely concerned for my well-being," Romana said. "It's rather sweet."
He spun on his heel and faced the console. "Well, let's not disappoint her." He typed a string of numbers and symbols on the keyboard, triple-checked the time/space coordinates on the monitor. He still needed to contact CAL and configure the TARDIS to download and bytecheck Romana, but that wouldn't take long. Not with Romana's help, anyway.
There was a twinge in his chest, like someone was pressing above his left heart with their finger, jabbing hard. It was an old, familiar pain, and the ache never dulled no matter how many times he went through this.
Usually, though, he didn't have to lose them more than once.
He reached for Romana and wrapped his arms round her. She still felt as real as the day she'd appeared in the Cloister Room, and if a man was the sum of his memories, she was one of the realest of all.
"All I want is for you to be happy, Romana," he said.
"I will be," she said. "Wherever I am."
no subject
on 2012-08-03 02:43 am (UTC)*sob*
no subject
on 2012-08-03 05:47 pm (UTC)