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eve11Main Post and Chapter Index
**
Thirty men faced him in the flickering torchlight. He tightened his grip on his sword, servos straining against synthetic skin. Behind him loomed the Pandorica, its elaborate locks laden with dust
"Zig-zag plotter!" A voice burst from the sound of static at his side.
"Stand aside!" the leader cried, and he bit back a laugh. He had already stood with her for a span ten times their lifetimes. He would not be moved now. The leader shouted
"Rory?"
The leader shouted at him again
"Rory! Are you listening?"
Rory blinked and found himself staring down at the clear floor in the console room, the smell of musty stone still caught in his throat. His fingers were clenched so hard around the two-way radio in his hand that his biceps hurt. There were men--no, wait. Where had that come from? He shook his head and looked up. Thunderclaps rumbled the ground underneath the TARDIS, adding to the dull lament of the cloister bell. His head felt light . . . where was Amy? Only then did he remember that he'd heard a voice--
"Stand aside! Caesar shall not--"
The TARDIS lurched and Rory fell against the console. Something round and hard and just the smallest bit springy jammed him in the thigh and he bit back a curse. When he looked down he saw it was a pinball plunger. Looped over it, attached to a length of twine was a post-it note displaying a set of intricate concentric circles and a thrice underlined exclamation--THAT MEANS YOU!!--in the Doctor's severe print. The twine was connected in turn to another piece of paper stuck half-way up the console, with a black arrow done in marker, pointing at a lever that Rory was sure had once been described as "only for show." His vision swam. Suddenly, it was all just a mass of colors and shapes swirling in front of him, with no dimension or meaning. Fear twisted his stomach; he was completely useless, and Amy . . .
"Caesar shall not be deprived of his prize!" Oh, if she could've heard that, Amy would have kicked this guy all the way back to Rome in the name of liberated women everywhere
"Rory!" This time it was a shout from across the room. "Zig-zag--"
Another jolt from the TARDIS shook the memory free, and Rory dropped the radio in favor of grabbing the mustard dispenser and hanging on. "Yeah, all right, zig-zag plotter!" he shouted back. A pang of guilt struck him at the outburst--there was no need to lash out at her. But an apology could wait; he was too busy furrowing his brow at the console until it made marginal sense again. "What does it look like, Amy? This machine is worse than a kitchen catch-all drawer!"
There was no answer. He looked up to see Amy hurrying down the stairs with the strangest expression on her face. He started to ask what was wrong but then found himself floating sideways. Amy's eyes widened almost comically, and she grimaced and flailed with all the grace of a fourteen-year-old basketball player as her legs left the stairs.
"And there goes the gravity!" She tried to throw her hands up with the indictment and caught herself before she could float away from the staircase. Her trainer found a support post on the railing and she shot herself forward to the console, nearly barreling into Rory's side. "Zig!" She caught the pinball plunger and sent him spinning out of the way to make room for her arms between him and the mass of gadgetry. "Zag!" She grasped hold of something that looked like a cross between a gearbox and an old Atari joystick. Her hip knocked into his stomach as she jammed her foot underneath the pedestal and braced herself.
"Wait--" Rory said, but Amy just threw her body backward, using all of her momentum to pull the joystick toward them.
"Plotter!" she cried triumphantly, and they crashed down, onto the console and then onto the floor.
"Ow." Rory tried to sit up. For a fleeting moment, he had the urge to check his interior casing for dents. Then his very human stomach lurched and he came two breaths away from losing his lunch all over his wife's backside. He rolled away from her, trying to chase away phantom senses: the smell of plastic and the subtle clicking sounds that fabricated joints made when they moved.
"Zig-zag plotter," he groaned, staring up at the ceiling. The lights were eerie and dim, and though the worst of the jolting had stopped, the cloister bell still tolled mournfully. "Why didn't you point it out to me? I just wanted to know which lever to pull."
Amy's head appeared over him, looking not angry as he had suspected, but unsure and scared. "Rory, are you all right? Please tell me you're all right."
"Hey," he said, reaching for her. "Hey, I'm fine. Just a bit . . ." muddled, he wanted to say, but trailed off. He was trying to be reassuring, but judging by the growing frown on Amy's face, he wasn't succeeding.
"Snap out of it!" Her temper finally flared, but her hands were still trembling. "I never paid attention in Latin and you know it! Oh--" She swayed on her knees. "Oh, my head . . . "
"Qua--?" Rory sat bolt upright, finally hearing the words he'd been speaking ("En, valeo."--"Cur mihi id non mostraveris?" --"Qua forma, Amy? Machina pejor quam culinaria arca scrutaria!"). His vision swam again, thoughts rearranging as he searched for the right context, and when he spoke again it was proper English. "Sorry about that. Sorry. It's all right. I'm fine, really."
Amy breathed a sigh of relief. Rory offered his arm and she let him hug her close, steadying them both. The strange dizziness receded, and the cloister bell echoed and stilled. Amy sniffed against his sleeve and then looked up.
"What just happened?" she asked.
"A glitch in the TARDIS, maybe?" Rory cast his gaze around the console room, wishing he had a better answer in any language. He got to his feet and offered her a hand up. "Whatever it was, I think it's getting back to normal, now."
Then the lights went out, and with a mechanical sigh, the ever present hum of the TARDIS rattled and died.
In the examination room, the bubble breathed.
Time reversed, gathering toward the spatial flash point that had been so precariously constructed here, amid the crushing strata of Groom Lake's long-dead past. Events converged along exponentially decaying radii and then crested, swelling the present moment to accommodate twenty-two minutes and three seconds. It was twenty-two minutes and three seconds that, until this inhalation, had been shaken free from the continuum's base measure, forced up like a ridge in a rug and set in motion. The temporal potential from this act propagated onward and was appropriated in turn for a reconfiguring of likelihoods--timelines coaxed and attenuated to six times longer than any linear progression of events should have taken. In effect, a mutual exclusion barrier formed, functioned, and then fell.
Events caught up to the break point and backlashed. Time, rewound, poured its potential backward along the affected paths. Those who had been stationed in the examination room, weapons primed at the barrier's spatial shadow, may have seen a fleeting shimmer or a contraction mapped onto its dimensions of height, width, and depth. None of them would remember it. Despite the quickening of heartbeats, the tightening of fingers on triggers, none of them would realize that the true danger was not in the present or the near future, but in the past--a collection of fixed events suddenly set into flux. Their brains, wired for strict cause and effect, were simply not equipped to perceive the complex meta-temporal dynamics involved.
But at the apex of this reversion, for two four-dimensional frames of reference, twenty-two minutes and three seconds suddenly existed again.
One held fast, cushioned by an iron grip on a paradox that, by its very existence, was anchored in something greater than linear time. Gotcha and Hold on! echoed against dull walls as, battered but unbowed, he gathered twenty-two minutes and three seconds of pure potential around the paradox, bracing this newly formed past and throwing consequences as far to the future as they would go.
The second had only a superficial grasp that loosed immediately, and was sent spinning through this new time like a moth in a hurricane. Voices echoed impossibly from moments not yet spoken, images kaleidoscoping and stretching to strange tunnels, as events poured through a mind that had no place for them. It should have hurt, this twisting and warping of everything, but the only thought that came to mind was what a trip, for ages and ages and ages. What a trip. Shouts like old arguments hurled through slamming doors, and the tinkling of breaking glass in the room sounded like a shattering ceramic, or like the ring of the shop bell down the street on a bright blue afternoon. Everything was merging together into one all-encompassing moment, and the only fear was that of standing on a precipice, looking up and down and out. Don't even think of coming back! . . . I'm sorry . . . Let it be--
Time surged forward again, breaking impossible bounds as the bubble burst, and all thought fled.
You never really escaped us, Melody
Melody. I love your name! I'm Amelia
Stupid
I'm all yours
Are you married, River?
Stupid name
What, Rory?
Penny in the air
escaped us, Melody Pond. We were always coming for you
How have I got Rory?
Are you asking?
Only River Song
Penny in the air
all yours sweetie
Only River Song gets to call me that
And the penny--
Her scream was lost in a crack of thunder that shook the world.
River gasped awake, feeling something cold and unyielding at her forehead, inches from her face. Her past heaved, and her gorge rose; she was trapped here, trapped in every prison at once: a suffocating cage of glass and rusting steel in the middle of the Nevada desert, a cold cell in Stormcage, a containment suit beneath a silent sea. Lightning flashed and she recoiled from the barrier in horror, seeing a faceplate instead of a driver's side window, trading one desolate setting for another and hearing the echo of his voice in her ears--Don't you dare! She found the latch by muscle memory alone and released it, kicking the door open.
A gust picked up where her feet left off, flinging the door to the end of its creaking hinges out into the dark. River followed it out, stumbling forward a few feet from the truck's interior. She sank to her knees, retching the contents of an empty stomach onto the damp ground. The heaves subsided to shuddering breaths as she forced herself to categorize the events swamping her senses. The impossible astronaut was long gone. The dead shores of Lake Silencio were behind her. There were snatches of a future she had yet to experience, flowing away like water through her fingers. She sat up, her memory struggling to keep pace with the present. She knew now was here in the dark desert, its air heavy with the smell of dust and rain. A few drops caught in her hair; a lull between the fronts passing overhead. The constant rumbling of approaching thunder gave ominous undertones to the rush of wind. The truck she had fled was a shadow of angles, black on black in front of her.
Lightning cast the night to day in a split second, illuminating the dull details of the cab: tires, wheel well, seats. The desert brush was blown sideways in the distance, momentarily visible beyond two open doors. She blinked away the afterimages, still trying to process her surroundings. Afterimages. The brush beyond two open doors. Beyond two--
Memory gripped her systems again, chasing away the last ghosts of her past and seizing her breath. River throttled her panic and staggered to her feet. Alone in the storm, she oriented herself in landmarks and momentum, her mind focusing on one thought--northeast--as she scanned the shadows. Information coalesced and she set off with no torch or compass to guide her. Maybe it was her old programming kicking in, or maybe it was the TARDIS singing through the edges of her mind; the direction she needed to go was suddenly irrefutable, clear as day.
The Doctor was only about thirty meters away from the truck. He had made it to the far side of a swell of foothills and was crumpled among the boulders and shrubs dotting the bare ground. She didn't see him at first in the gloom, but then the coming storm reasserted itself in a dazzling flash-bang that pulsated the air, leaving the smell of ozone and a deep reverberation that rolled through the earth. He lifted his head then, and the shadows were redefined into his lanky frame--head, arms, chest, and legs--pushing himself weakly up to one knee, one hand braced on the ground and another clutched to his ribs over his hearts. River reached him as he tried to stand, and there was no easy way to let him discover he was not alone, to let him orient or recognize or acclimate. He swayed and she simply caught him. The shock of her presence jolted through his body like a gunshot.
He roared and fought her in pure, uncomprehending terror. The struggle was too much for her, and they collapsed. River took the brunt of the fall, cushioning him from the unforgiving ground. She tried to talk to him, but the stream of useless words could do nothing to explain the chaos of limbs, dirt and darkness that gripped him. He tried to scramble away from her, to run, but he couldn't keep his balance; he made it only to his knees before crashing into her again. River caught his hand and he lashed out, a blind swipe that sent him reeling even as it connected with her injured arm. She hissed a breath of pain and held onto him with her good arm, a strong and steady grasp on his shoulder.
Tremors shook his body as he tried to make sense of her. His chest constricted with short, panicked breaths. His hand brushed her ear, tangled in her hair, and he gasped a wordless shout of surprise. His head fell forward, his other hand found her cheek, and he choked out a sob.
"Please, Sweetie, it's me." River put her hand over his, guiding it across her features. "It's River."
Thunder rumbled the ground and his head shot up again, his hands falling to a desperate grip on her shoulders. This close to him, in the dim light she could see the shine of his eyes, wide and terrified.
"Romana," he said urgently. "Av Daleks edviram! Av--" More words spilled out, the language familiar but in a set of conjugations River had never heard before. She only understood a handful: unravel, mercy, why. She knew enough about his past to realize she didn't want to understand any more. Old paradoxes in personal timelines, he had told her, and Bit out of practice, haven't done this since the war. The storm shook them and in a fit of strength he hauled them both to their feet, imploring her to run, please, now. But two steps toward the TARDIS had them on the ground again and he screamed in frustration, pounding a fist in the dirt, before trying once more to stand.
"No, it's all right, you're not there!" River held him back. She could feel the strength ebbing from him as despair warred with terror in whatever nightmare had trapped him. "Oh god, wherever it is, you're not there . . ."
He seemed to feel the physics of her speech; he held a breath in concentration and swatted the air in front of his face before losing his balance again. The next words he spoke, River knew. Romana, my love, I can't hear what you're saying. Why can't I see you? She tried to reach for his hand but the wind picked up, and another crack of thunder split the air. He shuddered, frustration descending to anger, and stumbled to his feet. River set her feet but he struggled against her, his words nearly swallowed by the coming gale. We have to get back to her . . . Let me go! We have to run . . .
His last link to the world was the whisper of his distant ship, and he was desperate to reach her. He had no idea that it was an impossible task. Even thirty meters back to their transport may well have been thirty miles, but she couldn't leave him here while she tried to start the truck again. The old ambulance was their only chance for escape, and she couldn't get him back there like this, not with him fighting every step.
Touch was the only anchor he had left. River steeled her strength and took firm hold of his wrist. He flinched and tried to shake off her grip, but she held on.
"I'm sorry, my love.” Unwavering, she directed his hand up to the back of his neck. "I have to get through to you—I don't know how else to explain it."
His fingers brushed the edge of the disc embedded there. Horrified, he closed his hand harshly around it and then cried out in agony. For a terrible moment River thought he was going to try to rip it out right there, but his knees buckled and he let go. She tried to brace him, but it wasn't enough; he hit the ground, hands and knees scraping stone. She sank with him, still repeating "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Sweetie," and trying to keep him grounded, hoping he could fight through his past along with the pain.
Rule thirty-two. Pain was information, brutal but efficient. Always listen long enough to decipher its message.
"River," he finally said. His hands quested outward, trembling fingers gliding over the gravel and grime around them. "Desert. August--" He murmured something, a snatch of a song or a Gallifreyan prayer lost into the storm. "August, nineteen sixty-nine. How long . . .?" He sat up, seeming to concentrate and then grimaced, falling against her. "Time . . . torn apart. Hurts. Can't feel it--"
"Then don't try," River said.
The skies opened up. She tried to help him up, to head back to shelter, but he put out a hand to stop her.
"Stay here," he told her. "Here, River. Now."
Rain swept through, drenching them both and tying them to this bleak landscape, to this present moment. The Doctor sighed at the deluge of sensation on his skin, and lifted his head to face the storm. River just shut her eyes and held him close.
Superposition.
It gave her focus a natural embedding, a pocket of structure in the unfettered continuum. So the timelines settled, and the TARDIS remembered.
She remembered puny insect chases linear lures across our mind entrenched. She remembered the stranglehold of total isolation in his delicate biochemistry. And she remembered the time they will have talked: sound and sight that ebbed away from her transient body until all that remained was the subtle warmth of touch. A final lesson from her foray into flesh and bone, his hand brushing her cheek. Translation: his palm flat against her outer shell. The whisper of his fingers tracing her corridors.
She needed to concentrate. She needed to be ready.
Her cloister bell slowed and then stopped, as volumes long dormant unfurled from the projective corners in her shell's domain. Her primary systems shut down. Her console went dead; no longer heedless and inefficient but purposeful, diverting all reserve energy to her preparations. She didn't notice the blow this dereliction dealt to her occupants. She didn't see Amy's shoulders shake with silent sobs in the darkness as she wondered What do we do now?, or feel Rory's resolve crumble with his remaining hopes that everything would work out if only they waited here, long enough. These were sets of measure zero and therefore fundamentally unimportant.
Something was lost, and the TARDIS remembered how she would find it again.
**
Interlude III | Part 9
**
Thirty men faced him in the flickering torchlight. He tightened his grip on his sword, servos straining against synthetic skin. Behind him loomed the Pandorica, its elaborate locks laden with dust
"Zig-zag plotter!" A voice burst from the sound of static at his side.
"Stand aside!" the leader cried, and he bit back a laugh. He had already stood with her for a span ten times their lifetimes. He would not be moved now. The leader shouted
"Rory?"
The leader shouted at him again
"Rory! Are you listening?"
Rory blinked and found himself staring down at the clear floor in the console room, the smell of musty stone still caught in his throat. His fingers were clenched so hard around the two-way radio in his hand that his biceps hurt. There were men--no, wait. Where had that come from? He shook his head and looked up. Thunderclaps rumbled the ground underneath the TARDIS, adding to the dull lament of the cloister bell. His head felt light . . . where was Amy? Only then did he remember that he'd heard a voice--
"Stand aside! Caesar shall not--"
The TARDIS lurched and Rory fell against the console. Something round and hard and just the smallest bit springy jammed him in the thigh and he bit back a curse. When he looked down he saw it was a pinball plunger. Looped over it, attached to a length of twine was a post-it note displaying a set of intricate concentric circles and a thrice underlined exclamation--THAT MEANS YOU!!--in the Doctor's severe print. The twine was connected in turn to another piece of paper stuck half-way up the console, with a black arrow done in marker, pointing at a lever that Rory was sure had once been described as "only for show." His vision swam. Suddenly, it was all just a mass of colors and shapes swirling in front of him, with no dimension or meaning. Fear twisted his stomach; he was completely useless, and Amy . . .
"Caesar shall not be deprived of his prize!" Oh, if she could've heard that, Amy would have kicked this guy all the way back to Rome in the name of liberated women everywhere
"Rory!" This time it was a shout from across the room. "Zig-zag--"
Another jolt from the TARDIS shook the memory free, and Rory dropped the radio in favor of grabbing the mustard dispenser and hanging on. "Yeah, all right, zig-zag plotter!" he shouted back. A pang of guilt struck him at the outburst--there was no need to lash out at her. But an apology could wait; he was too busy furrowing his brow at the console until it made marginal sense again. "What does it look like, Amy? This machine is worse than a kitchen catch-all drawer!"
There was no answer. He looked up to see Amy hurrying down the stairs with the strangest expression on her face. He started to ask what was wrong but then found himself floating sideways. Amy's eyes widened almost comically, and she grimaced and flailed with all the grace of a fourteen-year-old basketball player as her legs left the stairs.
"And there goes the gravity!" She tried to throw her hands up with the indictment and caught herself before she could float away from the staircase. Her trainer found a support post on the railing and she shot herself forward to the console, nearly barreling into Rory's side. "Zig!" She caught the pinball plunger and sent him spinning out of the way to make room for her arms between him and the mass of gadgetry. "Zag!" She grasped hold of something that looked like a cross between a gearbox and an old Atari joystick. Her hip knocked into his stomach as she jammed her foot underneath the pedestal and braced herself.
"Wait--" Rory said, but Amy just threw her body backward, using all of her momentum to pull the joystick toward them.
"Plotter!" she cried triumphantly, and they crashed down, onto the console and then onto the floor.
"Ow." Rory tried to sit up. For a fleeting moment, he had the urge to check his interior casing for dents. Then his very human stomach lurched and he came two breaths away from losing his lunch all over his wife's backside. He rolled away from her, trying to chase away phantom senses: the smell of plastic and the subtle clicking sounds that fabricated joints made when they moved.
"Zig-zag plotter," he groaned, staring up at the ceiling. The lights were eerie and dim, and though the worst of the jolting had stopped, the cloister bell still tolled mournfully. "Why didn't you point it out to me? I just wanted to know which lever to pull."
Amy's head appeared over him, looking not angry as he had suspected, but unsure and scared. "Rory, are you all right? Please tell me you're all right."
"Hey," he said, reaching for her. "Hey, I'm fine. Just a bit . . ." muddled, he wanted to say, but trailed off. He was trying to be reassuring, but judging by the growing frown on Amy's face, he wasn't succeeding.
"Snap out of it!" Her temper finally flared, but her hands were still trembling. "I never paid attention in Latin and you know it! Oh--" She swayed on her knees. "Oh, my head . . . "
"Qua--?" Rory sat bolt upright, finally hearing the words he'd been speaking ("En, valeo."--"Cur mihi id non mostraveris?" --"Qua forma, Amy? Machina pejor quam culinaria arca scrutaria!"). His vision swam again, thoughts rearranging as he searched for the right context, and when he spoke again it was proper English. "Sorry about that. Sorry. It's all right. I'm fine, really."
Amy breathed a sigh of relief. Rory offered his arm and she let him hug her close, steadying them both. The strange dizziness receded, and the cloister bell echoed and stilled. Amy sniffed against his sleeve and then looked up.
"What just happened?" she asked.
"A glitch in the TARDIS, maybe?" Rory cast his gaze around the console room, wishing he had a better answer in any language. He got to his feet and offered her a hand up. "Whatever it was, I think it's getting back to normal, now."
Then the lights went out, and with a mechanical sigh, the ever present hum of the TARDIS rattled and died.
In the examination room, the bubble breathed.
Time reversed, gathering toward the spatial flash point that had been so precariously constructed here, amid the crushing strata of Groom Lake's long-dead past. Events converged along exponentially decaying radii and then crested, swelling the present moment to accommodate twenty-two minutes and three seconds. It was twenty-two minutes and three seconds that, until this inhalation, had been shaken free from the continuum's base measure, forced up like a ridge in a rug and set in motion. The temporal potential from this act propagated onward and was appropriated in turn for a reconfiguring of likelihoods--timelines coaxed and attenuated to six times longer than any linear progression of events should have taken. In effect, a mutual exclusion barrier formed, functioned, and then fell.
Events caught up to the break point and backlashed. Time, rewound, poured its potential backward along the affected paths. Those who had been stationed in the examination room, weapons primed at the barrier's spatial shadow, may have seen a fleeting shimmer or a contraction mapped onto its dimensions of height, width, and depth. None of them would remember it. Despite the quickening of heartbeats, the tightening of fingers on triggers, none of them would realize that the true danger was not in the present or the near future, but in the past--a collection of fixed events suddenly set into flux. Their brains, wired for strict cause and effect, were simply not equipped to perceive the complex meta-temporal dynamics involved.
But at the apex of this reversion, for two four-dimensional frames of reference, twenty-two minutes and three seconds suddenly existed again.
One held fast, cushioned by an iron grip on a paradox that, by its very existence, was anchored in something greater than linear time. Gotcha and Hold on! echoed against dull walls as, battered but unbowed, he gathered twenty-two minutes and three seconds of pure potential around the paradox, bracing this newly formed past and throwing consequences as far to the future as they would go.
The second had only a superficial grasp that loosed immediately, and was sent spinning through this new time like a moth in a hurricane. Voices echoed impossibly from moments not yet spoken, images kaleidoscoping and stretching to strange tunnels, as events poured through a mind that had no place for them. It should have hurt, this twisting and warping of everything, but the only thought that came to mind was what a trip, for ages and ages and ages. What a trip. Shouts like old arguments hurled through slamming doors, and the tinkling of breaking glass in the room sounded like a shattering ceramic, or like the ring of the shop bell down the street on a bright blue afternoon. Everything was merging together into one all-encompassing moment, and the only fear was that of standing on a precipice, looking up and down and out. Don't even think of coming back! . . . I'm sorry . . . Let it be--
Time surged forward again, breaking impossible bounds as the bubble burst, and all thought fled.
You never really escaped us, Melody
Melody. I love your name! I'm Amelia
Stupid
I'm all yours
Are you married, River?
Stupid name
What, Rory?
Penny in the air
escaped us, Melody Pond. We were always coming for you
How have I got Rory?
Are you asking?
Only River Song
Penny in the air
all yours sweetie
Only River Song gets to call me that
And the penny--
Her scream was lost in a crack of thunder that shook the world.
River gasped awake, feeling something cold and unyielding at her forehead, inches from her face. Her past heaved, and her gorge rose; she was trapped here, trapped in every prison at once: a suffocating cage of glass and rusting steel in the middle of the Nevada desert, a cold cell in Stormcage, a containment suit beneath a silent sea. Lightning flashed and she recoiled from the barrier in horror, seeing a faceplate instead of a driver's side window, trading one desolate setting for another and hearing the echo of his voice in her ears--Don't you dare! She found the latch by muscle memory alone and released it, kicking the door open.
A gust picked up where her feet left off, flinging the door to the end of its creaking hinges out into the dark. River followed it out, stumbling forward a few feet from the truck's interior. She sank to her knees, retching the contents of an empty stomach onto the damp ground. The heaves subsided to shuddering breaths as she forced herself to categorize the events swamping her senses. The impossible astronaut was long gone. The dead shores of Lake Silencio were behind her. There were snatches of a future she had yet to experience, flowing away like water through her fingers. She sat up, her memory struggling to keep pace with the present. She knew now was here in the dark desert, its air heavy with the smell of dust and rain. A few drops caught in her hair; a lull between the fronts passing overhead. The constant rumbling of approaching thunder gave ominous undertones to the rush of wind. The truck she had fled was a shadow of angles, black on black in front of her.
Lightning cast the night to day in a split second, illuminating the dull details of the cab: tires, wheel well, seats. The desert brush was blown sideways in the distance, momentarily visible beyond two open doors. She blinked away the afterimages, still trying to process her surroundings. Afterimages. The brush beyond two open doors. Beyond two--
Memory gripped her systems again, chasing away the last ghosts of her past and seizing her breath. River throttled her panic and staggered to her feet. Alone in the storm, she oriented herself in landmarks and momentum, her mind focusing on one thought--northeast--as she scanned the shadows. Information coalesced and she set off with no torch or compass to guide her. Maybe it was her old programming kicking in, or maybe it was the TARDIS singing through the edges of her mind; the direction she needed to go was suddenly irrefutable, clear as day.
The Doctor was only about thirty meters away from the truck. He had made it to the far side of a swell of foothills and was crumpled among the boulders and shrubs dotting the bare ground. She didn't see him at first in the gloom, but then the coming storm reasserted itself in a dazzling flash-bang that pulsated the air, leaving the smell of ozone and a deep reverberation that rolled through the earth. He lifted his head then, and the shadows were redefined into his lanky frame--head, arms, chest, and legs--pushing himself weakly up to one knee, one hand braced on the ground and another clutched to his ribs over his hearts. River reached him as he tried to stand, and there was no easy way to let him discover he was not alone, to let him orient or recognize or acclimate. He swayed and she simply caught him. The shock of her presence jolted through his body like a gunshot.
He roared and fought her in pure, uncomprehending terror. The struggle was too much for her, and they collapsed. River took the brunt of the fall, cushioning him from the unforgiving ground. She tried to talk to him, but the stream of useless words could do nothing to explain the chaos of limbs, dirt and darkness that gripped him. He tried to scramble away from her, to run, but he couldn't keep his balance; he made it only to his knees before crashing into her again. River caught his hand and he lashed out, a blind swipe that sent him reeling even as it connected with her injured arm. She hissed a breath of pain and held onto him with her good arm, a strong and steady grasp on his shoulder.
Tremors shook his body as he tried to make sense of her. His chest constricted with short, panicked breaths. His hand brushed her ear, tangled in her hair, and he gasped a wordless shout of surprise. His head fell forward, his other hand found her cheek, and he choked out a sob.
"Please, Sweetie, it's me." River put her hand over his, guiding it across her features. "It's River."
Thunder rumbled the ground and his head shot up again, his hands falling to a desperate grip on her shoulders. This close to him, in the dim light she could see the shine of his eyes, wide and terrified.
"Romana," he said urgently. "Av Daleks edviram! Av--" More words spilled out, the language familiar but in a set of conjugations River had never heard before. She only understood a handful: unravel, mercy, why. She knew enough about his past to realize she didn't want to understand any more. Old paradoxes in personal timelines, he had told her, and Bit out of practice, haven't done this since the war. The storm shook them and in a fit of strength he hauled them both to their feet, imploring her to run, please, now. But two steps toward the TARDIS had them on the ground again and he screamed in frustration, pounding a fist in the dirt, before trying once more to stand.
"No, it's all right, you're not there!" River held him back. She could feel the strength ebbing from him as despair warred with terror in whatever nightmare had trapped him. "Oh god, wherever it is, you're not there . . ."
He seemed to feel the physics of her speech; he held a breath in concentration and swatted the air in front of his face before losing his balance again. The next words he spoke, River knew. Romana, my love, I can't hear what you're saying. Why can't I see you? She tried to reach for his hand but the wind picked up, and another crack of thunder split the air. He shuddered, frustration descending to anger, and stumbled to his feet. River set her feet but he struggled against her, his words nearly swallowed by the coming gale. We have to get back to her . . . Let me go! We have to run . . .
His last link to the world was the whisper of his distant ship, and he was desperate to reach her. He had no idea that it was an impossible task. Even thirty meters back to their transport may well have been thirty miles, but she couldn't leave him here while she tried to start the truck again. The old ambulance was their only chance for escape, and she couldn't get him back there like this, not with him fighting every step.
Touch was the only anchor he had left. River steeled her strength and took firm hold of his wrist. He flinched and tried to shake off her grip, but she held on.
"I'm sorry, my love.” Unwavering, she directed his hand up to the back of his neck. "I have to get through to you—I don't know how else to explain it."
His fingers brushed the edge of the disc embedded there. Horrified, he closed his hand harshly around it and then cried out in agony. For a terrible moment River thought he was going to try to rip it out right there, but his knees buckled and he let go. She tried to brace him, but it wasn't enough; he hit the ground, hands and knees scraping stone. She sank with him, still repeating "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Sweetie," and trying to keep him grounded, hoping he could fight through his past along with the pain.
Rule thirty-two. Pain was information, brutal but efficient. Always listen long enough to decipher its message.
"River," he finally said. His hands quested outward, trembling fingers gliding over the gravel and grime around them. "Desert. August--" He murmured something, a snatch of a song or a Gallifreyan prayer lost into the storm. "August, nineteen sixty-nine. How long . . .?" He sat up, seeming to concentrate and then grimaced, falling against her. "Time . . . torn apart. Hurts. Can't feel it--"
"Then don't try," River said.
The skies opened up. She tried to help him up, to head back to shelter, but he put out a hand to stop her.
"Stay here," he told her. "Here, River. Now."
Rain swept through, drenching them both and tying them to this bleak landscape, to this present moment. The Doctor sighed at the deluge of sensation on his skin, and lifted his head to face the storm. River just shut her eyes and held him close.
Superposition.
It gave her focus a natural embedding, a pocket of structure in the unfettered continuum. So the timelines settled, and the TARDIS remembered.
She remembered puny insect chases linear lures across our mind entrenched. She remembered the stranglehold of total isolation in his delicate biochemistry. And she remembered the time they will have talked: sound and sight that ebbed away from her transient body until all that remained was the subtle warmth of touch. A final lesson from her foray into flesh and bone, his hand brushing her cheek. Translation: his palm flat against her outer shell. The whisper of his fingers tracing her corridors.
She needed to concentrate. She needed to be ready.
Her cloister bell slowed and then stopped, as volumes long dormant unfurled from the projective corners in her shell's domain. Her primary systems shut down. Her console went dead; no longer heedless and inefficient but purposeful, diverting all reserve energy to her preparations. She didn't notice the blow this dereliction dealt to her occupants. She didn't see Amy's shoulders shake with silent sobs in the darkness as she wondered What do we do now?, or feel Rory's resolve crumble with his remaining hopes that everything would work out if only they waited here, long enough. These were sets of measure zero and therefore fundamentally unimportant.
Something was lost, and the TARDIS remembered how she would find it again.
**
Interlude III | Part 9
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Date: 2015-11-09 03:00 am (UTC)Sorry. I should have more to say about this, as it continues to be dense and fascinating, but that's about where I am right now. :)
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Date: 2015-11-10 01:58 am (UTC)