FIC: Ceremonial
7 Nov 2010 01:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
promethia_tenkTitle: Ceremonial
Fandom: Doctor Who, River, River/Doctor
Length: 2,500 words (!)
Rating: PG 13, suggestions of sex and murder
Spoilers: season 5
Summary: Life is held together by ritual.
AN1: Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cinderbella333 in exchange for this work of brilliance. She requested a fic about River being superstitious. I'm not sure to what extent this counts, but it is about River being ritualistic, about all the little ceremonies and symbolic acts she uses to give order to her life.
War Paint
Almost every society in the universe, River knows, has its ceremonial costumes, its uniforms, its masks and markers and badges and disguises--outward signs that set a person apart, place them in a role beyond their normal life. And so does she. Even if she is a society of one right now.
She eyes up the black catsuit laying on her bunk. Yes, it’s just a piece of clothing. But it’s also something more: another self. Someone not so entirely separate from her and yet also different. More. Smarter and braver and harder and faster and maybe a little bit crazy. Someone who would break into a queen’s treasure trove and run off with the loot. Someone in a position to need to do so . . . .
How did she ever end up here?
In the shower she has an inspiration, and for a few minutes the amusement of it takes her mind off the knot in her stomach. Cat ears. And a tail. For a cat burglar, see? She closes her eyes against the spray and laughs aloud at the thought, palms braced against the tile. Why not? Ten years ago she would have dismissed this whole business--every bit of it, every last insane detail--but now . . . . She should do it. Because she can.
Five minutes later she’s talked herself out of it, though, and is drying herself off. True, the sheer cheek of it would have given her that extra little psychological boost, and who knows, maybe if she’s caught in the act, the amused confusion it would provoke would gain her a few extra seconds to react. But she’s also going to be crawling through ventilation shafts and around heavy machinery and the last thing she wants to do is get something caught. There’s a reason catsuits are skin tight. And as tempting as it may be to put this off a bit for the sake of a visual pun, she needs to get moving now, while she’s got her courage up. She reaches for her outfit and starts going over mental checklists.
By the time she finishes doing up the bodice, her mind has honed itself down to that sleek sense of purpose, and she steps out into the corridor, the lines of the starship’s schematics sweeping by her inner eye as she aims herself towards her objective.
Gift
River smiles faintly to herself as she works. There are men with guns coming after her--she really doesn’t have the time to be aligning her glyphs as if she’d sat down with drafting equipment. Oh, she is a moron sometimes. Still, it’s an undeniable pleasure to watch her message shaping itself up in pristine rows and columns, even if it’s not the sort of thing he’d notice or care about. He will notice her spelling mistake, she hopes. Well, provided she gets a late enough model. He’d certainly had enough fun ribbing her about it when she was just learning, so she can practically hear him now: Honey, the next time you use an ambiguous declension to imply I’m a family pet, I’m not coming to pick you up, and you’ll have to find some other way to cope with the hard vacuum of space . . . I kid, I kid--I won’t be complicit in the death of someone who can plot a temporal recursion drift like that. Heh. She has missed him too much, of course she’s going to show off a little. Ok, a lot. Ok, she is shameless, but he always smiles at it. And . . . she’s going to have to check her coordinates again just before she delivers them, but if she’s calculated right, she’s actually going to make her jump in the same sector of space where they were once stranded for a week, a half a million years in the future. Not that she has any control over the Byzantium’s course, but it is a nice coincidence. Heck, if he’s traveling alone right now, maybe she’ll strand them there again . . . .
There. There’s that done. She gives her finished work a final admiring glance and then turns to go, taking a moment to wink at the camera on her way out: hello, sweetie.
Meditation
She always begins the same way. She rarely has control over her surroundings, so she controls this. Her diary. An open stretch of time. A pen for when she’s sure. A pencil for when she’s not. And a tie for when her hair--inevitably--starts to annoy her.
When she’s in a rush, she’ll jump straight to the information she needs, but for this . . . no, there is a ritual. First she reviews the general timeline--as far as she’s been able to construct it. Then a list of open questions: niggles, observations, pieces that don’t fit . . . all the little burrs that pull at her brain as she tries to do other things. From there she rereads her notes from their last meeting and starts looking: for patterns . . . for similarities . . . for clues.
The shape of it rises up in her mind, from out of the tangle of her other thoughts. It’s like a network or . . . some complex system of orbiting bodies, each with their own mass and heft, each with their own potentials and forces, subject to laws of attraction she only dimly understands but means to interpret. As she reads, information flows from the page and takes its place in the flux. The system shifts. New events push and pull and the whole breathes and grows and shapes itself to this new reality--balances, symmetries, tensions, ambiguities, incongruities--the fullness of it felt but not seen, space and time and thought stretched out together across the span of her consciousness.
There is a meeting, a moment that she can’t yet place. It exists in her mind in several places at once, and therefore in none of them. When she feels out into the gaps it all dissolves or retreats or evaporates and she gropes in frustration like . . . Tantalus after water. She reaches instead for the strings and tugs. Ideas sweep around her in arcs, and the system responds, adjusts, returns to its balance even as it moves. It’s a physical discomfort, the moment she can’t place--all these spots that don’t fit catch and pull at the flow, and the eddies ruffle her, and disturb her calm.
She runs her fingers down a page, soothes the jags in her concentration. There are words, and she traces them absently. The drawing of a face she’s seen only a few times, and not that time, not the time she can’t place. She smiles at it and soothes her fingers over him too, the slight moisture in her fingertips causing the graphite to smudge, faintly. She sits forward and squints down at the damage. It’s . . . not bad, actually. The quirk in his lips has gone from knowing to ever so slightly lascivious, and . . .
Oh.
She knows that look, yes. Has seen it before--- She riffles through pages, searching, searching . . .
And then there are cascades. And revelation. And brutal, ecstatic disorientation as the point she can’t place coalesces finally and everything, everything rushes around it, and flows with . . . inescapable grace, and finds in itself a new order.
She reaches for her pen.
Penance
The TARDIS dematerializes--silently, she notes, with gratitude--and she is alone again in her cell. If she’s lucky, the guards never even noticed her absence. Admittedly, there is something appealing about the idea of about a week in solitary right now (does that man ever shut up?), but she really doesn’t want to deal with the recriminations that would go along with it, the dance of questions and evasions, having to look again into the warden’s leering face and keep all her lies straight. No, she doesn’t have the energy for confrontation today, and she clutches her diary in one hand and prays to be left by herself, with a hard cot to support her and four walls to contain her guilt. Penance, she finds, takes structure and routine.
The Doctor has always been stronger than her in this way, as much as he refuses to believe it. He can face down his demons in the middle of the night, can wrestle them unassisted, in the dark, and then get up the next morning to do it all over again. She has no such fortitude. She can pull a trigger with a clear head, in the deadly certainty of its necessity. That is her strength, and she does not regret it, would do it again, would do it a million times if she had to. But this . . . this great afterwords . . . . No, she has no resources for it within herself, no way to cope with all the hours and minutes that stretch away from that point with a taunting emptiness. For some things, she laughs to herself, you need institutional help, and every once in a long while, even River Song can admit that she does need help.
He’s never been able to understand this choice of hers. Probably never will, either: he’s lived too long outside of any institution at all to recognize the value of sometimes giving over control. His anger, that day, had been terrible to see--he’d not even looked at her as the police took her away, for the first time, chained at the wrists--but forgiveness had come soon enough (at least from her perspective). Forgiveness, however, was not the same as understanding (at least from his perspective), and long after he’d forgiven her he continued to prod, to question, to goad her to leave her prison and not come back, not realizing the impossibility of the suggestion.
Ringing boot steps suddenly echo down the hall--running. So, they’ve found her out after all. Perhaps it’s for the best. She turns towards the bars and resigns herself to what will happen next.
Mantra
There’s a naked pause.
“River . . .” his face is pained, but also open, wondering. He reaches to her hair: “What did I ever do to deserve you?”
Oh, god. For a good ten seconds she considers simply not answering. Then, faint: “Spoilers.”
She can’t quite take the ensuing quiet. She grips his shoulders and starts to move.
Superstition
River once explained time loops to an eleven year old in the following way:
Being in a time loop is like being on a see-saw. You’re in one part of the loop on one end of the see-saw and someone else is in another part on the other end, and the whole thing exists all at the same time, and it stays in balance. You’ve played on a see-saw before, so you know what it’s like. You’re free, on your end, to do all kinds of things: you can move up or down the seat, you can invite someone else on too, you can bounce up and down . . . but whatever you do is going to affect the other person on the other end, and they’re free to do the same things, and the whole see-saw will move back and forth to keep everything in balance.
And her sister’s son, who had always been the precocious one and therefore her favorite, asked, with perfect innocence, the trenchant question: What happens if someone jumps off?
Well, she said, as calmly as she could, we try not to do that to people we like.
That was years ago. There’s a children’s play park, now, on the walk between her home and the University. She never looks over to watch what the children are doing; she finds reason to be fascinated with the stonework on the post office across the street.
Vows
“Aww, sweetie, you didn’t have to wait up for me.”
He’s just sprung up from one of the jump seats, looking considerably more perturbed than she’d like: “Where have you been??! I have been . . . worried sick!” His hands flail in the air as he bounds towards her.
“I couldn’t have been gone two hours togethe---woah!” He catches her slightly off balance as he skids into her. “Were you really? Worried?” He doesn’t answer that, but she takes his strangle embrace as response enough. “I’m . . . I’m sorry--I didn’t know . . . .” She struggles within herself over what to do with this uncharacteristic display of concern.
There’s some sort of mumbling into her shoulder which sounds like it might involve anxieties about witchcraft trials and . . . tapioca pudding? She knows there’s some strange laws on this planet, but that seems extreme, not to mention messy. She decides to go for distraction:
“I’ve brought you something.” With great difficulty she extricates one of her arms and twists it around her head to dangle her prize under his nose. Distraction seems to work:
“Nooooo!” He lets her go to grab the new thingamajig and squint at it piercingly.
“Yes.” --trying not to sound too smug.
“No!” He glances rapidly back and forth between her and the thing in his hands.
“Yes.” And this time she gives the smug free reign. Oh, she is good.
“Well, that certainly makes life easier. Where on earth did you find it?”
“Do you mean where on Ferrulous Prime? . . . and I’m sorry--it’s gonna have to be a secret.”
He gives her a look somewhere between disapproval and a pout, which she chooses to ignore. She wanders away to start the pre-flight routine.
“I thought these didn’t even exist in this century! It couldn’t have come cheap. Wait . . . ,” he trails after her, suspicious. “You didn’t sell an organ or something, did you?” And he surreptitiously lifts the hem of her shirt to check for scars.
She laughs and slaps his hand away. “I didn’t sell an organ.”
“Cheated a government official?”
She shakes her head.
“Stole it from the national museum? . . . Won it in a pudding eating competition? . . . . . . . . Shagged a parrot cult priest??!?!” She abandons all pretense of pressing buttons to lean against the console in amusement and watch him, and the conjectures continue unabated until he notices and grinds to a halt: “Why won’t you tell me?!?!”
“At this point? Because it’s far more entertaining to listen to you guess.”
He stares at her for several seconds before growling in frustration and making a vain attempt to strangle the air, to which she cocks an eyebrow. He deposits himself back in the chair in a huff:
“Keep your secrets, then, but if I find out this is more than the ordinary sort of unsavory, I’m filing for divorce!”
She turns back to the console and resumes her pre-flight. “Promises, promises . . . .” She makes a point of leaving the breaks on before she takes off, and peers through the time rotor to catch the hint of his smile.
____________________
AN2: This whole fic builds on an almost ridiculous amount of speculative meta, so thanks generally to anyone who's ever picked the show apart with me for a bit, and thanks particularly torumpelsnorcack , elisi , and owlsie for analysis and rambling.
AN3: The cat ears and tail are apparently a request made by Alex Kingston for the scene in the royal collection, which got turned down by the producers. Who I can only assume are idiots.
Fandom: Doctor Who, River, River/Doctor
Length: 2,500 words (!)
Rating: PG 13, suggestions of sex and murder
Spoilers: season 5
Summary: Life is held together by ritual.
AN1: Written for
cinderbella333 in exchange for this work of brilliance. She requested a fic about River being superstitious. I'm not sure to what extent this counts, but it is about River being ritualistic, about all the little ceremonies and symbolic acts she uses to give order to her life.War Paint
Almost every society in the universe, River knows, has its ceremonial costumes, its uniforms, its masks and markers and badges and disguises--outward signs that set a person apart, place them in a role beyond their normal life. And so does she. Even if she is a society of one right now.
She eyes up the black catsuit laying on her bunk. Yes, it’s just a piece of clothing. But it’s also something more: another self. Someone not so entirely separate from her and yet also different. More. Smarter and braver and harder and faster and maybe a little bit crazy. Someone who would break into a queen’s treasure trove and run off with the loot. Someone in a position to need to do so . . . .
How did she ever end up here?
In the shower she has an inspiration, and for a few minutes the amusement of it takes her mind off the knot in her stomach. Cat ears. And a tail. For a cat burglar, see? She closes her eyes against the spray and laughs aloud at the thought, palms braced against the tile. Why not? Ten years ago she would have dismissed this whole business--every bit of it, every last insane detail--but now . . . . She should do it. Because she can.
Five minutes later she’s talked herself out of it, though, and is drying herself off. True, the sheer cheek of it would have given her that extra little psychological boost, and who knows, maybe if she’s caught in the act, the amused confusion it would provoke would gain her a few extra seconds to react. But she’s also going to be crawling through ventilation shafts and around heavy machinery and the last thing she wants to do is get something caught. There’s a reason catsuits are skin tight. And as tempting as it may be to put this off a bit for the sake of a visual pun, she needs to get moving now, while she’s got her courage up. She reaches for her outfit and starts going over mental checklists.
By the time she finishes doing up the bodice, her mind has honed itself down to that sleek sense of purpose, and she steps out into the corridor, the lines of the starship’s schematics sweeping by her inner eye as she aims herself towards her objective.
Gift
River smiles faintly to herself as she works. There are men with guns coming after her--she really doesn’t have the time to be aligning her glyphs as if she’d sat down with drafting equipment. Oh, she is a moron sometimes. Still, it’s an undeniable pleasure to watch her message shaping itself up in pristine rows and columns, even if it’s not the sort of thing he’d notice or care about. He will notice her spelling mistake, she hopes. Well, provided she gets a late enough model. He’d certainly had enough fun ribbing her about it when she was just learning, so she can practically hear him now: Honey, the next time you use an ambiguous declension to imply I’m a family pet, I’m not coming to pick you up, and you’ll have to find some other way to cope with the hard vacuum of space . . . I kid, I kid--I won’t be complicit in the death of someone who can plot a temporal recursion drift like that. Heh. She has missed him too much, of course she’s going to show off a little. Ok, a lot. Ok, she is shameless, but he always smiles at it. And . . . she’s going to have to check her coordinates again just before she delivers them, but if she’s calculated right, she’s actually going to make her jump in the same sector of space where they were once stranded for a week, a half a million years in the future. Not that she has any control over the Byzantium’s course, but it is a nice coincidence. Heck, if he’s traveling alone right now, maybe she’ll strand them there again . . . .
There. There’s that done. She gives her finished work a final admiring glance and then turns to go, taking a moment to wink at the camera on her way out: hello, sweetie.
Meditation
She always begins the same way. She rarely has control over her surroundings, so she controls this. Her diary. An open stretch of time. A pen for when she’s sure. A pencil for when she’s not. And a tie for when her hair--inevitably--starts to annoy her.
When she’s in a rush, she’ll jump straight to the information she needs, but for this . . . no, there is a ritual. First she reviews the general timeline--as far as she’s been able to construct it. Then a list of open questions: niggles, observations, pieces that don’t fit . . . all the little burrs that pull at her brain as she tries to do other things. From there she rereads her notes from their last meeting and starts looking: for patterns . . . for similarities . . . for clues.
The shape of it rises up in her mind, from out of the tangle of her other thoughts. It’s like a network or . . . some complex system of orbiting bodies, each with their own mass and heft, each with their own potentials and forces, subject to laws of attraction she only dimly understands but means to interpret. As she reads, information flows from the page and takes its place in the flux. The system shifts. New events push and pull and the whole breathes and grows and shapes itself to this new reality--balances, symmetries, tensions, ambiguities, incongruities--the fullness of it felt but not seen, space and time and thought stretched out together across the span of her consciousness.
There is a meeting, a moment that she can’t yet place. It exists in her mind in several places at once, and therefore in none of them. When she feels out into the gaps it all dissolves or retreats or evaporates and she gropes in frustration like . . . Tantalus after water. She reaches instead for the strings and tugs. Ideas sweep around her in arcs, and the system responds, adjusts, returns to its balance even as it moves. It’s a physical discomfort, the moment she can’t place--all these spots that don’t fit catch and pull at the flow, and the eddies ruffle her, and disturb her calm.
She runs her fingers down a page, soothes the jags in her concentration. There are words, and she traces them absently. The drawing of a face she’s seen only a few times, and not that time, not the time she can’t place. She smiles at it and soothes her fingers over him too, the slight moisture in her fingertips causing the graphite to smudge, faintly. She sits forward and squints down at the damage. It’s . . . not bad, actually. The quirk in his lips has gone from knowing to ever so slightly lascivious, and . . .
Oh.
She knows that look, yes. Has seen it before--- She riffles through pages, searching, searching . . .
And then there are cascades. And revelation. And brutal, ecstatic disorientation as the point she can’t place coalesces finally and everything, everything rushes around it, and flows with . . . inescapable grace, and finds in itself a new order.
She reaches for her pen.
Penance
The TARDIS dematerializes--silently, she notes, with gratitude--and she is alone again in her cell. If she’s lucky, the guards never even noticed her absence. Admittedly, there is something appealing about the idea of about a week in solitary right now (does that man ever shut up?), but she really doesn’t want to deal with the recriminations that would go along with it, the dance of questions and evasions, having to look again into the warden’s leering face and keep all her lies straight. No, she doesn’t have the energy for confrontation today, and she clutches her diary in one hand and prays to be left by herself, with a hard cot to support her and four walls to contain her guilt. Penance, she finds, takes structure and routine.
The Doctor has always been stronger than her in this way, as much as he refuses to believe it. He can face down his demons in the middle of the night, can wrestle them unassisted, in the dark, and then get up the next morning to do it all over again. She has no such fortitude. She can pull a trigger with a clear head, in the deadly certainty of its necessity. That is her strength, and she does not regret it, would do it again, would do it a million times if she had to. But this . . . this great afterwords . . . . No, she has no resources for it within herself, no way to cope with all the hours and minutes that stretch away from that point with a taunting emptiness. For some things, she laughs to herself, you need institutional help, and every once in a long while, even River Song can admit that she does need help.
He’s never been able to understand this choice of hers. Probably never will, either: he’s lived too long outside of any institution at all to recognize the value of sometimes giving over control. His anger, that day, had been terrible to see--he’d not even looked at her as the police took her away, for the first time, chained at the wrists--but forgiveness had come soon enough (at least from her perspective). Forgiveness, however, was not the same as understanding (at least from his perspective), and long after he’d forgiven her he continued to prod, to question, to goad her to leave her prison and not come back, not realizing the impossibility of the suggestion.
Ringing boot steps suddenly echo down the hall--running. So, they’ve found her out after all. Perhaps it’s for the best. She turns towards the bars and resigns herself to what will happen next.
Mantra
There’s a naked pause.
“River . . .” his face is pained, but also open, wondering. He reaches to her hair: “What did I ever do to deserve you?”
Oh, god. For a good ten seconds she considers simply not answering. Then, faint: “Spoilers.”
She can’t quite take the ensuing quiet. She grips his shoulders and starts to move.
Superstition
River once explained time loops to an eleven year old in the following way:
Being in a time loop is like being on a see-saw. You’re in one part of the loop on one end of the see-saw and someone else is in another part on the other end, and the whole thing exists all at the same time, and it stays in balance. You’ve played on a see-saw before, so you know what it’s like. You’re free, on your end, to do all kinds of things: you can move up or down the seat, you can invite someone else on too, you can bounce up and down . . . but whatever you do is going to affect the other person on the other end, and they’re free to do the same things, and the whole see-saw will move back and forth to keep everything in balance.
And her sister’s son, who had always been the precocious one and therefore her favorite, asked, with perfect innocence, the trenchant question: What happens if someone jumps off?
Well, she said, as calmly as she could, we try not to do that to people we like.
That was years ago. There’s a children’s play park, now, on the walk between her home and the University. She never looks over to watch what the children are doing; she finds reason to be fascinated with the stonework on the post office across the street.
Vows
“Aww, sweetie, you didn’t have to wait up for me.”
He’s just sprung up from one of the jump seats, looking considerably more perturbed than she’d like: “Where have you been??! I have been . . . worried sick!” His hands flail in the air as he bounds towards her.
“I couldn’t have been gone two hours togethe---woah!” He catches her slightly off balance as he skids into her. “Were you really? Worried?” He doesn’t answer that, but she takes his strangle embrace as response enough. “I’m . . . I’m sorry--I didn’t know . . . .” She struggles within herself over what to do with this uncharacteristic display of concern.
There’s some sort of mumbling into her shoulder which sounds like it might involve anxieties about witchcraft trials and . . . tapioca pudding? She knows there’s some strange laws on this planet, but that seems extreme, not to mention messy. She decides to go for distraction:
“I’ve brought you something.” With great difficulty she extricates one of her arms and twists it around her head to dangle her prize under his nose. Distraction seems to work:
“Nooooo!” He lets her go to grab the new thingamajig and squint at it piercingly.
“Yes.” --trying not to sound too smug.
“No!” He glances rapidly back and forth between her and the thing in his hands.
“Yes.” And this time she gives the smug free reign. Oh, she is good.
“Well, that certainly makes life easier. Where on earth did you find it?”
“Do you mean where on Ferrulous Prime? . . . and I’m sorry--it’s gonna have to be a secret.”
He gives her a look somewhere between disapproval and a pout, which she chooses to ignore. She wanders away to start the pre-flight routine.
“I thought these didn’t even exist in this century! It couldn’t have come cheap. Wait . . . ,” he trails after her, suspicious. “You didn’t sell an organ or something, did you?” And he surreptitiously lifts the hem of her shirt to check for scars.
She laughs and slaps his hand away. “I didn’t sell an organ.”
“Cheated a government official?”
She shakes her head.
“Stole it from the national museum? . . . Won it in a pudding eating competition? . . . . . . . . Shagged a parrot cult priest??!?!” She abandons all pretense of pressing buttons to lean against the console in amusement and watch him, and the conjectures continue unabated until he notices and grinds to a halt: “Why won’t you tell me?!?!”
“At this point? Because it’s far more entertaining to listen to you guess.”
He stares at her for several seconds before growling in frustration and making a vain attempt to strangle the air, to which she cocks an eyebrow. He deposits himself back in the chair in a huff:
“Keep your secrets, then, but if I find out this is more than the ordinary sort of unsavory, I’m filing for divorce!”
She turns back to the console and resumes her pre-flight. “Promises, promises . . . .” She makes a point of leaving the breaks on before she takes off, and peers through the time rotor to catch the hint of his smile.
____________________
AN2: This whole fic builds on an almost ridiculous amount of speculative meta, so thanks generally to anyone who's ever picked the show apart with me for a bit, and thanks particularly to
rumpelsnorcack , elisi , and owlsie for analysis and rambling.AN3: The cat ears and tail are apparently a request made by Alex Kingston for the scene in the royal collection, which got turned down by the producers. Who I can only assume are idiots.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 7 Nov 2010 07:57 am (UTC)Questioning without hope of answering. That was my first thought after finishing this fic. Everything is presented in shadow and half-reveals, an uncertain landscape. . .
Though I am a little surprised you didn't pursue River's marked arms. I think they'd make an interesting jumping off point for rituals/superstitions.
(no subject)
Date: 8 Nov 2010 12:59 am (UTC)Chuckled at the "Cat Ears" reference, very cute. ; )
That was just too good not to do something with.
Questioning without hope of answering. That was my first thought after finishing this fic. Everything is presented in shadow and half-reveals, an uncertain landscape. . .
I think I realized by the time I'd finished this that it was mostly about anxiety . . .
Though I am a little surprised you didn't pursue River's marked arms. I think they'd make an interesting jumping off point for rituals/superstitions.
Hmmm, you're right. There probably is something interesting to be written there. I think in my head, though, they really are a utilitarian tally system until proven otherwise, so I'll have to leave it to someone else.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 7 Nov 2010 08:08 am (UTC)I love that this started with the cat suit. I remember you and I discussing this in passing in one thread (meow) and so I was biting my finger to not giggle too loudly at this unseemly hour. I think you took what could have been a crack-ish concept and you made it seem plausible for her to be thinking about. I can totally see this being something someone (or in this case River) is thinking about while they're trying to psych themselves up to do something that they can't quite believe they're going to do. And I love that you have her not do it, not because she's too proud to be seen that way, but because in the end, she's realistic about the dangers of wearing something that could trip her up.
And then the part you wrote about her leaving the message on the Byzantium! That was so perfect. I'm always going to think of this piece when I see that scene now. In particular, I just absolutely and completely loved this: "Honey, the next time you use an ambiguous declension to imply I’m a family pet, I’m not coming to pick you up, and you’ll have to find some other way to cope with the hard vacuum of space . . . I kid, I kid--I won’t be complicit in the death of someone who can plot a temporal recursion slip like that."
The part about the diary! I could see her in my mind's eye doing this and I can see her need for it. She always touches that diary with so much reverence and I don't think it's completely just because of what's written inside or how it connects her to the Doctor. I think it's also what she sees about herself in it and how she uses it to keep control in her wild life, to make sense of her self. You captured that in a very poetic but realistic manner.
And then penance. That was so beautiful and so true that it could have easily served as its own separate little piece. There are some sentences you used that were absolute brilliance about why she needed to go back, why the doctor couldn't understand. And the bit about sometimes needing institutional help. That was so River. Funny. Clever. Biting. And very true.
Mantra. Short but it said so much.
Now, Superstition is probably my absolute favorite. It's such a great metaphor. You took this big concepts both about time and interdependency of all people and summed it up so concisely. And then having it applied to River and the Doctor. Ouch. Especially the bit about asking what happens when someone jumps off. That was a great question because it's totally one of those moments of, "Out of the mouth of babes." That has to be terrifying, to know someone has that much control over you and to know that you have so much control over them in return. And I particularly like the metaphor because its something people choose to do both as individual and together. It's also not something that in its nature is daunting. It's supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be sharing enjoyment in each other's presence.
And the last one. Oh, that was just so much fun to read as a River/Doctor shipper. And it was really good to have this story begin on a lighter note and end on one. I do prefer to read stories like that because it leaves me wanting to know more. It's also a good example of some less complicated times and explains why they don't just burn out on all that angst and deep-thinking. And I love the idea of River bringing him a present and him being giddy over it and then their beautiful banter about what ridiculous thing she had to have done for it. There's a lot to be seen even under their light comments. The fact that the Doctor is willing to believe (even in joking) that she'd sell an organ just to get him something. I love the Doctor being so worried for her because a whole bunch of this story involves how her life is impacted with the Doctor, and that outpouring of feeling from him shows that he's just as impacted by her.
This was just a joy to read. Thank you so much for writing it. You did a fantastic job with the prompt and I obviously love this story to the core.
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Date: 8 Nov 2010 02:22 am (UTC)You took what was a very vague, a little unlikely prompt and turned it into something gorgeous.
You know? It turned out to be the perfect prompt. I genuinely was feeling like I was tapped out on material for this pairing and (barring the odd bit of crackfic or banter/fluff) was going to have to wait for new episodes. And something about that prompt just opened up all these areas that--yeah, I have spent a lot of time thinking about, but never thought to make into fic. This is why I love getting other perspectives, it really does open you up to more. So thanks for that.
I think you took what could have been a crack-ish concept and you made it seem plausible for her to be thinking about.
From the minute she first James Bond-ed her way across the screen, I just felt like she was saying to herself 'if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it ALL THE WAY.' I have to say I approve =D
And I love that you have her not do it, not because she's too proud to be seen that way, but because in the end, she's realistic about the dangers of wearing something that could trip her up.
River doesn't seem too hung up on appearing ridiculous (hello, Cleopatra outfit), but she is deeply practical when it comes down to it.
And then the part you wrote about her leaving the message on the Byzantium!
I've gotta say, in some ways that's the saddest section of this fic to me. The whole escape plan just seems like such a painstakingly crafted and deeply romantic gesture, and what kind of reaction does she get to it? It always hurts me to watch--I figure a lot of her snark there is quite defensive.
I think it's also what she sees about herself in it and how she uses it to keep control in her wild life, to make sense of her self.
I very much agree. I wanted it to seem like a portion of her own mind, outside her body--another part of her. Not to mention the fact that the whole thing must be just a fantastic puzzle to work out all the time. I swear timey-wimey is intellectual crack, and Moffat knows it.
There are some sentences you used that were absolute brilliance about why she needed to go back, why the doctor couldn't understand.
Thank you very much indeed. I'm very proud of that section. I've moved away from thinking River will kill the Doctor to thinking she's going to kill some other man, just because the opportunity for philosophical opposition is so much greater if she kills someone else. If she killed the Doctor . . . well, would he really care? But if there was some situation where a good man needed to die--it wasn't right, but it was necessary--I think River could do that. The Doctor is phenomenally bad at those kinds of decisions, the hard objective decisions, and tends to lock up when the idealistic option is denied him (ie: Waters of Mars, The Beast Below). I feel like it would be entirely in character for River to usurp that kind of decision from him, in order to spare him having to make it, and I think it would be entirely in character for the Doctor to take it very badly. On the other side of it, though, the Doctor has a terrific amount of practice at coping with a heavy conscience . . . does River? I suspect not.
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Date: 8 Nov 2010 02:23 am (UTC)Thank you :-) Full credit is probably due here.
And I particularly like the metaphor because its something people choose to do both as individual and together. It's also not something that in its nature is daunting. It's supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be sharing enjoyment in each other's presence.
Ooooo . . . yes.
And it was really good to have this story begin on a lighter note and end on one. I do prefer to read stories like that because it leaves me wanting to know more.
I don't much like anything long that's too thoroughly depressive, and I don't feel like that would have been true to River's life, either, even if so much of this fic really is about anxiety.
There's a lot to be seen even under their light comments. The fact that the Doctor is willing to believe (even in joking) that she'd sell an organ just to get him something. I love the Doctor being so worried for her because a whole bunch of this story involves how her life is impacted with the Doctor, and that outpouring of feeling from him shows that he's just as impacted by her.
I am so deeply relieved that this worked for you in this way. The last section is by far the one I'm most nervous about. It does need to be an affirmation, it does need to feel emotionally satisfying, and yet when you're trying to communicate that through banter, it's very difficult--everything is indirect and there are so many opportunities for misinterpretation. I do love writing banter for them, and yet when I try to use it to somewhat more serious ends, it's a bit of a minefield :-\
Thank you again for leaving such a lovely comment <3
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Date: 7 Nov 2010 10:27 am (UTC)it all made sense to me, I only noticed that you mispelled "cheap" as "cheep".
<3
(no subject)
Date: 8 Nov 2010 01:01 am (UTC)it all made sense to me, I only noticed that you mispelled "cheap" as "cheep".
Ooo, thanks. Good catch.
P.S.: that icon is ridiculously adorable.
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Date: 7 Nov 2010 03:11 pm (UTC)sand just loved all of that!
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Date: 8 Nov 2010 01:01 am (UTC)hehe I loved the Cat-suit bit ;)
Somebody had to do something with it. It was just too good to leave alone!
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Date: 7 Nov 2010 08:39 pm (UTC)This was just so inutterably gorgeous and I really have no words to say how lovely it is. Your River is so wonderful -- funny, charming, smug, vulnerable and competent and the whole thing leaves me wanting more ... more of these snapshots, more of River, more of her interactions with the Doctor. Just ... more.
Also the cat suit -- how could anyone refuse to let Alex Kingston wear cat ears? Really?
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Date: 8 Nov 2010 01:08 am (UTC)Ooh, is this one of the shiny and varied things you've been working on? If so. I very much approve (and in fact I approve even if not, heh).
Lol. I half forget what the shiny and varied things were, actually, but this is probably indirectly part of them. By which I mean I didn't know I was going to be writing this two days ago, but I have no doubt that some shiny and varied thing has made its influence felt in this.
the whole thing leaves me wanting more ... more of these snapshots, more of River, more of her interactions with the Doctor. Just ... more.
Oooof. I'm deeply flattered :-) I'm also deeply drained. This completely took it out of me, haha.
Also the cat suit -- how could anyone refuse to let Alex Kingston wear cat ears? Really?
They must be morons. It is the only logical conclusion.
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Date: 8 Nov 2010 03:55 am (UTC)(While I'm aware she's an object of derision for many, I've always loved her.)
There is just the most graceful fortitude in the way you've written it.
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Date: 8 Nov 2010 09:15 pm (UTC)How are you so amazing?
Date: 8 Nov 2010 05:27 am (UTC)And then, and then, OMG this:
"the next time you use an ambiguous declension to imply I’m a family pet"
made me so ridiculously happy, because I love when anyone talks about Gallifreyan, and the little nuances of language, and River learning it...wonderful!
The time loop explanation was adorable and clever all at once!
And the ending, such a beautiful and tender relationship, but you make it so subtle (his little smile, her winding him up). Oh, this was too good. Brilliant!
Radioactive ladybug bite.
Date: 8 Nov 2010 10:30 pm (UTC)Oh, my god. Your River voice. Her voice! I can hear her voice so well in this.
Thank you so much. That is deeply reassuring.
I love when anyone talks about Gallifreyan, and the little nuances of language, and River learning it...wonderful!
Lol, I'm glad you liked it. Actually, were you the one who appreciated the silly tense I made up in one of my fics once? I seem to remember that. Is this an area of study for you?
It's a bit unfair to River, really, because the declension system in Old High Gallifreyan is a beast (highly simplified in the modern language), and it's not like the Doctor doesn't get it wrong half the time himself. But let's say she got some good sex out of playing mock-hurt at the teasing ;-)
And the ending, such a beautiful and tender relationship, but you make it so subtle (his little smile, her winding him up). Oh, this was too good. Brilliant!
This is good to hear. I worried about that ending being too subtle, too easy to misinterpret, a little too cold, etc. It's a tricky balance when everything's being implied.
Thanks so much for the lovely comment.
Keep eating those greens, then!
From:Re: Keep eating those greens, then!
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Date: 8 Nov 2010 11:32 am (UTC)(You or the fic, whichever.)
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Date: 8 Nov 2010 10:35 pm (UTC)(I was going to take the hug for myself, figuring that the fic, being non-corporeal, wasn't likely to appreciate it. Then I realized the hug is non-corporeal too *ponders*)
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Date: 8 Nov 2010 02:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 8 Nov 2010 04:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 8 Nov 2010 10:37 pm (UTC)I look forward to your thoughts if/when that happens.
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Date: 12 Nov 2010 09:46 pm (UTC)Ahem.
Brilliant work, as always. I am completely fascinated by how each subsection has its own tone and language. And the duality! Setting “War Paint” in a shower; the gift that’s a call that’s an inside joke that’s probably a paradox; the penance that’s not necessary but welcome, &c.
(“Gift” was somehow both sad and hopeful and romantic all at once. Whenever I watch that scene now I’m going to think of it.)
Now favourite parts:
“Because she can.” <3
“A pen for when she’s sure. A pencil for when she’s not.” This! Such a great metaphor.
There is a meeting, a moment that she can’t yet place. It exists in her mind in several places at once, and therefore in none of them. When she feels out into the gaps it all dissolves or retreats or evaporates and she gropes in frustration like . . . Tantalus after water. She reaches instead for the strings and tugs. Ideas sweep around her in arcs, and the system responds, adjusts, returns to its balance even as it moves. It’s a physical discomfort, the moment she can’t place--all these spots that don’t fit catch and pull at the flow, and the eddies ruffle her, and disturb her calm.
I love this. All of it. It is perfect. I am rambling. It is still perfect.
The see-saw is such a great description, I don’t even.
And this time she gives the smug free reign. Oh, she is good. You go, River, own your smug!
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Date: 14 Nov 2010 04:06 pm (UTC)And the duality! Setting “War Paint” in a shower; the gift that’s a call that’s an inside joke that’s probably a paradox; the penance that’s not necessary but welcome, &c.
Heh. Largely unintentional :-) I love it when people reading bring extra depth to what you wrote.
(“Gift” was somehow both sad and hopeful and romantic all at once. Whenever I watch that scene now I’m going to think of it.)
Others have said the same thing as well, and it makes me unimaginably happy. I've been thinking of that scene that way for ages, and now it's like I've infected everybody else with it, lol.
“Because she can.” <3
Heh. It's like she's always walking around going 'if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it ALL THE WAY."
There is a meeting, a moment that she can’t yet place. It exists in her mind . . .
Writing is always crammed full of beautiful descriptions of emotion. Why do so few people ever talk about what it's like to think (analytically speaking)? Or when they do it's always horribly bland--really skeletal mentions, just enough to push the plot on. Somebody had to rectify the imbalance.
The see-saw is such a great description, I don’t even.
I'm really proud of that one. I was trying to figure out why cause/effect paradoxes in time loops don't bother me and the image popped into my head. It was like, how could you make someone else see the whole loop spatially, all at once, rather than as a series of events?
Thank you again for the lovely comment <3
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Date: 14 Nov 2010 08:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 24 Nov 2010 09:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 25 Nov 2010 06:38 am (UTC)Upon reflection, I'm quite ridiculously proud of this one. I'm sure it's my favorite that I've yet written, and if anyone asks me again what are my thoughts/opinions/predictions about River, I shall simply be able to point them here because this is, essentially, everything I want to say about the character. It's also pretty unique amongst my fics in making me *calmer* by the time I'm done reading it. Usually reading my own writing tends to agitate me. It's a pleasant sort of agitation, but agitation none the less. Not this one, though.
Ok, enough ego from me for today.
I'd been meaning to ask you how you came up with the prompt you did. I find it interesting to know what angle other people are coming from, particularly when they manage to put my own thinking/writing through a major shift.
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Date: 26 Feb 2011 12:13 pm (UTC)There are two things however that I wanted to comment on:
The Doctor has always been stronger than her in this way, as much as he refuses to believe it. He can face down his demons in the middle of the night, can wrestle them unassisted, in the dark, and then get up the next morning to do it all over again. She has no such fortitude. She can pull a trigger with a clear head, in the deadly certainty of its necessity. That is her strength, and she does not regret it, would do it again, would do it a million times if she had to. But this . . . this great afterwords . . . . No, she has no resources for it within herself, no way to cope with all the hours and minutes that stretch away from that point with a taunting emptiness. For some things, she laughs to herself, you need institutional help, and every once in a long while, even River Song can admit that she does need help.
I absolutely love this insight, both into the Doctor and to River, and it's one of the things I'd never really thought about, but that fit so beautifully that I find myself all speechless. (There are also other thoughts that I want to share if you ever read my Alex 'verse. Just about how people cope - it's not really relevant to this fic in particular.) Anyway, it's always good to see differences highlighted.
Secondly, I love how the Doctor is mostly absent, and yet he's everywhere. I've been trying to think of a way to describe it, and the only thing that came to mind was this image from my profile page. I loved that image from the first time I saw it, because although it looks like just the Doctor, it's actually all about Amy - or about the Doctor and Amy, her impact on him: She's everywhere, like negative space. And that's how this fic works, that's how they work - you see the imprint they leave on each other, even when they're alone. So far we're mostly seeing the mark the Doctor has left on River, but with time we'll see how she shapes him in turn. And I love this fic for showing that.
(no subject)
Date: 26 Feb 2011 05:26 pm (UTC)Well, thank you very much :) That's why I wrote it--it all fit, and I wanted other people to see those connections.
I absolutely love this insight, both into the Doctor and to River, and it's one of the things I'd never really thought about, but that fit so beautifully that I find myself all speechless. (There are also other thoughts that I want to share if you ever read my Alex 'verse. Just about how people cope - it's not really relevant to this fic in particular.) Anyway, it's always good to see differences highlighted.
Working out that River must be staying in prison by her own choice was a big ahhhhhh moment for me, and it's so entirely opposite of anything the Doctor would do. It's kind of interesting: I think the kinship between River and Jack is a loose one, but you can spot similar instincts at times. When I was watching "Exit Wounds" and Captain John asked him why he let himself be buried and he said "penance," my eyes bugged out a bit. Same word and everything.
Secondly, I love how the Doctor is mostly absent, and yet he's everywhere. I've been trying to think of a way to describe it, and the only thing that came to mind was this image from my profile page.
Thank you. Actually, I think Moffat writes that kind of thing a lot, and I absolutely adore it--you can see it in the way Rory is present even when he's been erased from time too. I keep coming back to the idea of space--he doesn't write emotions so much as create spaces for them to well up. He defines spaces between people. Which is, as I've said, what I love in this icon--I swear I can see the bubble around them.
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