katherine_b (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
katherine_b) wrote2013-11-14 08:00 am
katherine_b) wrote2013-11-14 08:00 am
Entry tags:
DW Fic: Redemption Part 42/50
Title: Redemption 42/50
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
katherine_b
Rating: PG
Summary: When you have lost everything, what do you do to get it back?
Characters: The non-Doctor first glimpsed at the end of Name of the Doctor and a lot of old friends.
Part XLII
“Hello, Canton.”
The man sitting in a chair on the porch of his house looks up at the greeting and a smile crosses his face.
“Vadlott! At long last! I was only saying the other day that it must be about time for you to turn up.”
“I’m afraid so.” The Vadlott nods at his tardis. “Come on. They’re waiting.”
Canton joins him inside the blue box before speaking again. “Who’s waiting?” he demands.
“The Doctor, to begin with.” The Vadlott closes the door. “Although I’m afraid you won’t the chance to speak to him. You see, our destination is the day the Doctor dies.”
The American stares at him in disbelief. “No,” he protests.
“Quite right,” the Vadlott agrees, moving towards the console. “No. It’s all nonsense. A bit of theatre to satisfy the laws of time and prevent the universe splintering into a million pieces the way it wants to. The way it would if this didn’t happen!”
“Ah.” Canton frowns a little. “And how do you know about it if it hasn’t happened yet? Apart from you being a time-traveller, of course.”
The Vadlott holds up an envelope the same colour as the tardis. “I’m afraid I intercepted your mail. Couldn’t have you seeing this before you spoke to me. Because the one thing it doesn’t say is that you need to bring this with you.”
He hands over the envelope and also a large tank of fuel, seeing that Canton’s eyes widen in surprise.
“What’s this for?”
“To start the funeral pyre.” The Vadlott sets the tardis in motion. “The Silence won’t believe the Doctor’s dead unless they see the body burning. They know Time Lords are too valuable to be buried.”
“Well,” Canton takes the envelope out of his hand, “as long as everyone else is in on the secret, I guess it won’t matter.”
“Ah, that’s the other problem.” The Vadlott leans against the console. “Only three people will know the truth: you, the Doctor and the person who pulls the trigger. Everyone else there will believe it’s real. That’s why you’re going to have to be incredibly convincing, Canton, just like you were in 1969 when you pretended to hunt down the Doctor, Amy and Rory.”
“Is this why you’re making me do this?” demands the other man almost angrily. “Because you know I’m a good actor?”
“And because, in the lives of Amy, Rory and River, it’s already happened,” the Vadlott adds. “For them, that happened before the adventures you remember, so it can’t be changed. Fixed point in time. I’m not making you do it at all. It just has to happen this way because it already has.”
Canton stares down at the red can he is holding. “I take it,” he says slowly, “that they won’t want to believe it’s the Doctor who has just been killed and I’ll have assure them that it was.”
“And River will know the importance of burning a Time Lord’s body when he’s dead,” the Vadlott adds, nodding in agreement.
“And,” Canton looks at the blue envelope for another moment before pocketing it, “can I tell them about our future – well, their future, with me?”
“If you like,” the Vadlott replies. “It won’t change anything, not now. Just don’t go into too many details.”
Conversation languishes as the tardis touches down several miles from Lake Silencio at a few minutes before two o’clock in the afternoon on Friday April 22, 2011. The button showing the presence of the Doctor is flashing wildly as they materialise, the Vadlott having ensured that every possible cloaking device is active so that nobody, particularly the other Time Lord, will see them.
“It was good to meet you, Canton,” the Vadlott says, holding out a car-key. “There’s a truck waiting next to the tardis. All yours. Feel free to drive it home when this charade is over and live out the rest of your life happily, knowing you’ve done everything time needed from you.”
“Thank you.” After taking the key, Canton hefts the can of fuel in his hand for a moment before crossing to the tardis doors. Once standing on the threshold, though, he stops and looks back.
“But, supposing they ask,” he asks, “how am I meant to have known everything about this?”
The Vadlott gives a bitter smile as he turns back to the controls. “Simple,” he says. “Tell them the Doctor told you.”
He watches the doors close behind Canton and hears the truck engine start. Then he sets the tardis in motion and heads for his next destination.
“I’m sorry, old girl,” he says apologetically as the tardis begins, grudgingly, to materialise. “I know you don’t like this sort of place for a landing, but we don’t have a choice. Just make sure your shields don’t fail, that’s all! I don’t fancy a swim!”
He has scarcely finished speaking before several dull thuds echo, the sound even carrying through the water. The tardis beeps, whines – and stabilises once time continues as usual, averting the change that the Vadlott knows was caused when River tried to alter the course of time and save the Doctor.
At once he activates the light on top of the tardis as a beacon, and listens as the water outside becomes increasingly churned up. He runs for the doors, flinging them open and extending a hand to the woman in the space suit, who flings up the helmet visor as soon as she is safely inside the tardis shields.
The Vadlott pulls River towards him, hauling off the helmet and seeing that tears are still running down her face. He slams the doors shut with one hand, the other around her shoulders as she buries her face in her shoulder, weeping bitterly.
“There now, my darling,” he soothes, holding her against him. “I know. I know all about it.”
“I didn’t want to do it,” River sobs, pounding her fists against his chest. “He made me! He made me shoot him!”
“He had to.” He smooths her rampant curls back from her face. “To keep time running in the right way. To save the universe from tearing itself apart. And,” he tilts her face up so that he can look into her tear-filled eyes, “even if it really had been him there, and you’d had to kill him, you know he forgives you. He would never blame you for doing what you had to.”
He tears off her gloves, tossing them on top of the helmet, which is lying on the floor nearby, and then presses a handkerchief into her fingers. As she rests her head against his shoulder, wiping her eyes and sniffing, he pulls out his sonic screwdriver and presses it against the box that had kept River alive in the bottom of the lake. Sparks fly and he uses his hand to prevent them flying into her face or hair, but finally they cease and he knows that the suit is dead.
“Let’s get this cursed thing off you,” he suggests gently. “Then – oh, I don’t know. A cup of tea, perhaps.”
“Yes. Please.”
As they work together to remove the suit, the Vadlott is unable to help thinking back to the time when he will have to remove a similar garment from this woman before he buries her body. The thought is bitter, but he drives it away, knowing he cannot give any hint of it to River. Spoilers.
“Can we burn it?” demands River angrily once she is finally free from the suit’s grip.
“What a good idea.” The Vadlott piles up the garments and then draws River to the far side of the room for safety before he turns to the console. “Whenever you like, old girl!”
A spark flies from the heart of the ship and lands on the white fabric, causing it to flare up at once. The heat coming off it is intense, but lasts only a few moments and then the ash, which is all that remains, is sucked into one of the ship’s vents, which shuts with a firm click.
“Tea,” the Vadlott suggests again, but River is still staring at the space on the floor where the suit burned.
“It’s been part of me for so long,” she murmurs numbly. “I’ve grown up with it. And now it’s gone.”
“That’s not the only thing that’s different,” he tells her, and she looks up at him in confusion. “Check your diary,” he adds.
She finds it in her pocket, quickly starting to flip through the pages. He waits, knowing that this will be the ultimate distraction from everything she has just undergone, before smiling when she looks up at him in confusion.
“The Doctor is writing himself out of history,” he explains, “which means everything that you did together is being unwritten, too. Not forgotten,” he adds quickly as he sees her face fall. “Not by you, and definitely not by him, but by the rest of the world. After all, in order to satisfy the Silence, that’s what really matters.”
He watches her turn the blank pages. “Maybe I don’t really need it anymore,” she offers. “I can remember what was where even without being able to see it. This one,” she taps it, “was after out Christmas visit to Paris, when I was thinking about my first regeneration. You,” she adds accusingly, pointing at the Vadlott, “weren’t there when I regenerated into this body!”
“You didn’t need me,” he replies, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice as he adds, “You had the Doctor.”
She throws herself at him, flinging her arms around his neck and pressing her lips to his cheek. “It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have wanted you,” she whispers, hugging him as hard as she can manage. “I’ll always want you!”
He hugs her back, the feeling that he has lost her forever to the Doctor’s affections fading. Perhaps a little of his bitterness towards the other Time Lord is also assuaged, allowing him to recognise for the first time the envy he has long felt towards the Doctor.
As he looks down at the diary in River’s hand, he remembers where he first saw it, and now he understands another reason for the pages to be blank. Releasing his loving hold on River, the tea forgotten, he crosses to the console, inputting a set of co-ordinates.
“We have somewhere to be,” he tells her. “Leadworth, the 26th of June, 2010.”
“Mother and Father’s wedding!” River’s eyes shine. “Are we going?”
“Not as guests.” The Vadlott smiles a little. “They don’t know who you are then, remember.”
“And the Doctor wouldn’t want to see you there,” she adds, almost as if she can read his thoughts. “Then why are we going?”
“Well, you want to give them a present, don’t you?” he asks. “And that,” he taps the diary, “is the biggest, best present they could have.”
“Something old,” River recites, smiling for the first time since entering the tardis as she hugs the diary to her chest, “something new, something borrowed and something blue!”
“Exactly.” He grins at her. “Go and dig around in the wardrobe for something appropriate to wear, dear. You will want to look good for your husband, after all. We’ll wait to land until you’re ready.”
River has always enjoyed trying on the different clothes that appeared in the clothing room after he and the tardis came back into existence following Big Bang Two, so it’s no surprise when she willingly disappears in that direction, leaving the diary on the console. She returns some time later, dressed to the nines in a black suit with a black velvet jacket over the top, the plunging neckline of both garments emphasised by the necklace of pearls she has clearly hunted out of his collection of historic jewellery pieces. On her lapel she has pinned a brooch that is made of a plant sprig with pearls as berries to match, which the Vadlott knows the Doctor gave River for a birthday present. She has done her hair and applied fresh make-up so that there is no trace of her earlier tears. She looks so stunning that it brings an involuntary smile to his face.
“Beautiful, dear,” he tells her as she parades it for him. He swallows an inconvenient lump in his throat. “You look simply beautiful.”
She kisses him and clings to his arm as they arrive in Leadworth, where he picks up the diary again and hands it to her.
“I’m not sure I’m ready to give it up,” she says wistfully as her fingers close around the worn blue book.
“You do need it,” he promises, thinking of the Library. “And history needs it, too, so it will come back to you. Trust me.”
She hugs him again. “Always,” she vows softly before turning to the doors as they open to reveal the garden and the hall in the distance where the wedding will take place. She takes a step forward before glancing uncertainly back in his direction. He opens his arms and she falls into them, hugging him one last time.
“Go and give the Doctor hell for me, River Song,” he whispers into her ear. “And be careful of yourself, my little Melody. Never forget me.”
“Spoilers,” she replies teasingly, before pulling away and heading for the door.
He smiles as he watches her go and then turns to the console, sending himself and the tardis into the vortex just as the light flashes on the console to tell him that, somewhere down there, he and the Doctor have just been brought back into existence thanks to Amy Pond and her beautiful, brave, extraordinary daughter, Melody River Song Pond.
Next Part
Author:
katherine_b Rating: PG
Summary: When you have lost everything, what do you do to get it back?
Characters: The non-Doctor first glimpsed at the end of Name of the Doctor and a lot of old friends.
Part XLII
“Hello, Canton.”
The man sitting in a chair on the porch of his house looks up at the greeting and a smile crosses his face.
“Vadlott! At long last! I was only saying the other day that it must be about time for you to turn up.”
“I’m afraid so.” The Vadlott nods at his tardis. “Come on. They’re waiting.”
Canton joins him inside the blue box before speaking again. “Who’s waiting?” he demands.
“The Doctor, to begin with.” The Vadlott closes the door. “Although I’m afraid you won’t the chance to speak to him. You see, our destination is the day the Doctor dies.”
The American stares at him in disbelief. “No,” he protests.
“Quite right,” the Vadlott agrees, moving towards the console. “No. It’s all nonsense. A bit of theatre to satisfy the laws of time and prevent the universe splintering into a million pieces the way it wants to. The way it would if this didn’t happen!”
“Ah.” Canton frowns a little. “And how do you know about it if it hasn’t happened yet? Apart from you being a time-traveller, of course.”
The Vadlott holds up an envelope the same colour as the tardis. “I’m afraid I intercepted your mail. Couldn’t have you seeing this before you spoke to me. Because the one thing it doesn’t say is that you need to bring this with you.”
He hands over the envelope and also a large tank of fuel, seeing that Canton’s eyes widen in surprise.
“What’s this for?”
“To start the funeral pyre.” The Vadlott sets the tardis in motion. “The Silence won’t believe the Doctor’s dead unless they see the body burning. They know Time Lords are too valuable to be buried.”
“Well,” Canton takes the envelope out of his hand, “as long as everyone else is in on the secret, I guess it won’t matter.”
“Ah, that’s the other problem.” The Vadlott leans against the console. “Only three people will know the truth: you, the Doctor and the person who pulls the trigger. Everyone else there will believe it’s real. That’s why you’re going to have to be incredibly convincing, Canton, just like you were in 1969 when you pretended to hunt down the Doctor, Amy and Rory.”
“Is this why you’re making me do this?” demands the other man almost angrily. “Because you know I’m a good actor?”
“And because, in the lives of Amy, Rory and River, it’s already happened,” the Vadlott adds. “For them, that happened before the adventures you remember, so it can’t be changed. Fixed point in time. I’m not making you do it at all. It just has to happen this way because it already has.”
Canton stares down at the red can he is holding. “I take it,” he says slowly, “that they won’t want to believe it’s the Doctor who has just been killed and I’ll have assure them that it was.”
“And River will know the importance of burning a Time Lord’s body when he’s dead,” the Vadlott adds, nodding in agreement.
“And,” Canton looks at the blue envelope for another moment before pocketing it, “can I tell them about our future – well, their future, with me?”
“If you like,” the Vadlott replies. “It won’t change anything, not now. Just don’t go into too many details.”
Conversation languishes as the tardis touches down several miles from Lake Silencio at a few minutes before two o’clock in the afternoon on Friday April 22, 2011. The button showing the presence of the Doctor is flashing wildly as they materialise, the Vadlott having ensured that every possible cloaking device is active so that nobody, particularly the other Time Lord, will see them.
“It was good to meet you, Canton,” the Vadlott says, holding out a car-key. “There’s a truck waiting next to the tardis. All yours. Feel free to drive it home when this charade is over and live out the rest of your life happily, knowing you’ve done everything time needed from you.”
“Thank you.” After taking the key, Canton hefts the can of fuel in his hand for a moment before crossing to the tardis doors. Once standing on the threshold, though, he stops and looks back.
“But, supposing they ask,” he asks, “how am I meant to have known everything about this?”
The Vadlott gives a bitter smile as he turns back to the controls. “Simple,” he says. “Tell them the Doctor told you.”
He watches the doors close behind Canton and hears the truck engine start. Then he sets the tardis in motion and heads for his next destination.
“I’m sorry, old girl,” he says apologetically as the tardis begins, grudgingly, to materialise. “I know you don’t like this sort of place for a landing, but we don’t have a choice. Just make sure your shields don’t fail, that’s all! I don’t fancy a swim!”
He has scarcely finished speaking before several dull thuds echo, the sound even carrying through the water. The tardis beeps, whines – and stabilises once time continues as usual, averting the change that the Vadlott knows was caused when River tried to alter the course of time and save the Doctor.
At once he activates the light on top of the tardis as a beacon, and listens as the water outside becomes increasingly churned up. He runs for the doors, flinging them open and extending a hand to the woman in the space suit, who flings up the helmet visor as soon as she is safely inside the tardis shields.
The Vadlott pulls River towards him, hauling off the helmet and seeing that tears are still running down her face. He slams the doors shut with one hand, the other around her shoulders as she buries her face in her shoulder, weeping bitterly.
“There now, my darling,” he soothes, holding her against him. “I know. I know all about it.”
“I didn’t want to do it,” River sobs, pounding her fists against his chest. “He made me! He made me shoot him!”
“He had to.” He smooths her rampant curls back from her face. “To keep time running in the right way. To save the universe from tearing itself apart. And,” he tilts her face up so that he can look into her tear-filled eyes, “even if it really had been him there, and you’d had to kill him, you know he forgives you. He would never blame you for doing what you had to.”
He tears off her gloves, tossing them on top of the helmet, which is lying on the floor nearby, and then presses a handkerchief into her fingers. As she rests her head against his shoulder, wiping her eyes and sniffing, he pulls out his sonic screwdriver and presses it against the box that had kept River alive in the bottom of the lake. Sparks fly and he uses his hand to prevent them flying into her face or hair, but finally they cease and he knows that the suit is dead.
“Let’s get this cursed thing off you,” he suggests gently. “Then – oh, I don’t know. A cup of tea, perhaps.”
“Yes. Please.”
As they work together to remove the suit, the Vadlott is unable to help thinking back to the time when he will have to remove a similar garment from this woman before he buries her body. The thought is bitter, but he drives it away, knowing he cannot give any hint of it to River. Spoilers.
“Can we burn it?” demands River angrily once she is finally free from the suit’s grip.
“What a good idea.” The Vadlott piles up the garments and then draws River to the far side of the room for safety before he turns to the console. “Whenever you like, old girl!”
A spark flies from the heart of the ship and lands on the white fabric, causing it to flare up at once. The heat coming off it is intense, but lasts only a few moments and then the ash, which is all that remains, is sucked into one of the ship’s vents, which shuts with a firm click.
“Tea,” the Vadlott suggests again, but River is still staring at the space on the floor where the suit burned.
“It’s been part of me for so long,” she murmurs numbly. “I’ve grown up with it. And now it’s gone.”
“That’s not the only thing that’s different,” he tells her, and she looks up at him in confusion. “Check your diary,” he adds.
She finds it in her pocket, quickly starting to flip through the pages. He waits, knowing that this will be the ultimate distraction from everything she has just undergone, before smiling when she looks up at him in confusion.
“The Doctor is writing himself out of history,” he explains, “which means everything that you did together is being unwritten, too. Not forgotten,” he adds quickly as he sees her face fall. “Not by you, and definitely not by him, but by the rest of the world. After all, in order to satisfy the Silence, that’s what really matters.”
He watches her turn the blank pages. “Maybe I don’t really need it anymore,” she offers. “I can remember what was where even without being able to see it. This one,” she taps it, “was after out Christmas visit to Paris, when I was thinking about my first regeneration. You,” she adds accusingly, pointing at the Vadlott, “weren’t there when I regenerated into this body!”
“You didn’t need me,” he replies, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice as he adds, “You had the Doctor.”
She throws herself at him, flinging her arms around his neck and pressing her lips to his cheek. “It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have wanted you,” she whispers, hugging him as hard as she can manage. “I’ll always want you!”
He hugs her back, the feeling that he has lost her forever to the Doctor’s affections fading. Perhaps a little of his bitterness towards the other Time Lord is also assuaged, allowing him to recognise for the first time the envy he has long felt towards the Doctor.
As he looks down at the diary in River’s hand, he remembers where he first saw it, and now he understands another reason for the pages to be blank. Releasing his loving hold on River, the tea forgotten, he crosses to the console, inputting a set of co-ordinates.
“We have somewhere to be,” he tells her. “Leadworth, the 26th of June, 2010.”
“Mother and Father’s wedding!” River’s eyes shine. “Are we going?”
“Not as guests.” The Vadlott smiles a little. “They don’t know who you are then, remember.”
“And the Doctor wouldn’t want to see you there,” she adds, almost as if she can read his thoughts. “Then why are we going?”
“Well, you want to give them a present, don’t you?” he asks. “And that,” he taps the diary, “is the biggest, best present they could have.”
“Something old,” River recites, smiling for the first time since entering the tardis as she hugs the diary to her chest, “something new, something borrowed and something blue!”
“Exactly.” He grins at her. “Go and dig around in the wardrobe for something appropriate to wear, dear. You will want to look good for your husband, after all. We’ll wait to land until you’re ready.”
River has always enjoyed trying on the different clothes that appeared in the clothing room after he and the tardis came back into existence following Big Bang Two, so it’s no surprise when she willingly disappears in that direction, leaving the diary on the console. She returns some time later, dressed to the nines in a black suit with a black velvet jacket over the top, the plunging neckline of both garments emphasised by the necklace of pearls she has clearly hunted out of his collection of historic jewellery pieces. On her lapel she has pinned a brooch that is made of a plant sprig with pearls as berries to match, which the Vadlott knows the Doctor gave River for a birthday present. She has done her hair and applied fresh make-up so that there is no trace of her earlier tears. She looks so stunning that it brings an involuntary smile to his face.
“Beautiful, dear,” he tells her as she parades it for him. He swallows an inconvenient lump in his throat. “You look simply beautiful.”
She kisses him and clings to his arm as they arrive in Leadworth, where he picks up the diary again and hands it to her.
“I’m not sure I’m ready to give it up,” she says wistfully as her fingers close around the worn blue book.
“You do need it,” he promises, thinking of the Library. “And history needs it, too, so it will come back to you. Trust me.”
She hugs him again. “Always,” she vows softly before turning to the doors as they open to reveal the garden and the hall in the distance where the wedding will take place. She takes a step forward before glancing uncertainly back in his direction. He opens his arms and she falls into them, hugging him one last time.
“Go and give the Doctor hell for me, River Song,” he whispers into her ear. “And be careful of yourself, my little Melody. Never forget me.”
“Spoilers,” she replies teasingly, before pulling away and heading for the door.
He smiles as he watches her go and then turns to the console, sending himself and the tardis into the vortex just as the light flashes on the console to tell him that, somewhere down there, he and the Doctor have just been brought back into existence thanks to Amy Pond and her beautiful, brave, extraordinary daughter, Melody River Song Pond.
Next Part
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“Although I’m afraid you won’t the chance to speak to him. - Missed the word 'have'
And AWWWW, I ADORE what you did with the series 6 (and series 5) finale!
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And that was a fun if rather mind-bending little description, but a nice way to tie up the Vadlott-River relationship.
Oops, thanks, fixed!
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You're welcome!
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