Write All Night (Spoiler_Song New Year Fic): Neverland, Part 2
“Ten years.” Amy moved the sonic from Freya’s face to The Doctor’s so she could see his haggard reaction. “Do you know how long that is, Doctor? A decade! Just ‘ten minutes tops,’ she said, and it’s been ten years! Every night that little girl waits at the windowsill, staring up at the stars. And you called me The Girl Who Waited!” She shook her head, her voice shattering like crystal.
“D-does she know?”
“No. Each time I look at her, I can’t help but be reminded of that other little ginger girl, who grew up with her aunt because she had no parents. And now it’s happened all over again.”
“Who’s her father?”
Amy’s jack slackened. “Are you serious?” she baulked. “Who do you think her father is!”
The Doctor’s shoulders slouched and he shook his head. “Could be anybody.”
“She was your wife!”
“You misunderstand,” he choked. “Timelords and humans…they can’t. It doesn’t work like that. Susan and David tried to conceive for years and ended up adopting orphans. And River, once, much younger than you ever knew her, told me that she had miscarried.” His Adam’s apple moved under the eerily glow of the sonic. “It’s like with Donna, the mind of a Timelord isn’t adept to a human body or any mix thereof.”
Amy shoved the sonic into his chest. “Then you tell me why that little girl isn’t like the other ten-year-olds her age! Why she’s so much more clever than even the oldest children at her school! Why her dreams are filled with details of stars and planets and names she should’ve never heard of! Tell me, Doctor, why does she have two heartbeats if she’s not your daughter!”
“Dad?”
Both Amy and The Doctor jumped at the tender sound from the doorway. Looking up from one another, they could see a tall blonde in a skin tight army green t-shirt, framed by the light pouring in from the hallway. “How long have you been standing there?” they asked simultaneously.
“Long enough.” Jenny stepped inside and cautiously approached her father and his former companion. “You must be Amelia Pond. I’ve heard a lot about you. You’re a hard act to follow, almost like the sister I never had.” Her ponytail swung back and forth behind her shoulders as she sat down on the edge of the bed. “Two heartbeats, you say?”
Amy pinched her lips together and nodded through tears. “They have an arrhythmic beat, but there are two of them just the same.”
Jenny tugged back the covers, careful not to wake the child, and laid one hand to the left of her chest. After a moment, she drew it along to the right. Wordlessly, she reached for her father’s hand and brought it down to the rise and fall of Freya’s body. Left, then right. “You said River conceived once. So isn’t it possible - even in the minutest of circumstances - that the right combination of genes could come together that wouldn’t be deadly?”
The child stirred beneath his hand and sleepily curled into a fetal position, wrapping herself around The Doctor’s arm. Her tousled curls fell around her face, concealing the features that so vividly mimicked those of her begotten mother.
When Jenny rose, The Doctor slunk into her vacated spot. For a being of so many words, it was baffling that he found himself in a position where none were adequate. He knew he probably shouldn’t, but he couldn’t help himself, doing what he shouldn’t came naturally, so he ladled the child out from her covers and cradled her to his chest. It should have been worrisome, but somehow, the undulation of her irregular heartbeat seemed calming.
Her lids peeled apart, revealing eyes that weren’t special in color or shape or size, yet they resonated deep inside The Doctor. They were young, so young. “It’s you.” Little fingers trailed up the buttons on his shirt to the burgundy bow tie at his neck and fingered it curiously. A yawn escaped her open mouth. “I know you.”
The Doctor shook his head, swallowing back emotions he hadn’t had since that evening at the Singing Towers. The child in his arms resonated the beauty he had memorized from that night. “I don’t believe we’ve ever met.”
“You’re Peter Pan.”
The Doctor heard Jenny’s airy chuckle as he shook his head. “I’m afraid not. I’m The Doctor.”
“Uh-uh,” she replied defiantly. “You’re Peter Pan. And the Great Wizard.” She sat up on his knee. “You’re my hero. That’s what she said.”
“Who?”
“The lady in the screen.” Freya slid off The Doctor’s knee and skirted around Amy and Jenny as though there was nothing remotely odd about her aunt and two people she’d never met being at her bedside in the dead of night. In a rush of fluid movements, she booted up her laptop, logged online, and was waiting for a screen to load as The Doctor approached her from behind.
Amy squinted at the screen. File after file of both familiar classics and names she’d never heard of were catalogued in the laptop’s history. “Frey, what is this? What have you been doing on here?”
“Reading.”
“Dad, look.” Jenny urgently pointed to one of the file listings. “That one won’t be published for another century!”
“Where did you get these?” The Doctor queried, his brows knitting together in bafflement.
“I told you: the lady in the screen.” The page that had been loading finally finished, returning a simple message: Connection Request Granted. Freya reached for the web camera clipped to the top of her laptop and powered it on. The box flickered and the little girl beamed as the connection completed.
“Hello, Sweetie.”
Amy’s eyebrows shot so high on her forehead that The Doctor thought they might blow off. Without taking her eyes off the screen, she slammed her hand against The Doctor’s arm. “River?!”
“Amy,” the image on screen greeted. It looked like River, wearing a shimmering white evening gown and surrounded by a backdrop of books. Clutched in her hands, she even held her TARDIS shaped diary.
“But…how?”
“The Library,” The Doctor answered. “The biggest computer in the universe.”
“I don’t understand…if you’re okay, why didn’t you-”
The Doctor grasped Amy’s hand, effectively quieting her. He shook his head. “That’s why I’m sad.” He fidgeted with his bowtie. “I hear you’ve been telling Freya stories.”
“Have you now?” she laughed, tinkling and familiar, the way she had laughed back on the beach where Byzantium had crashed.
“Absolute whoppers,” The Doctor went on teasingly. “About magic and Neverland?”
“And Gallifrey!” The child tilted her head back, staring upside down at The Doctor. “River says I’m Gallifreyan and that’s how I got my name. I’ve read about it…it’s so beautiful. Sometimes if I close my eyes, I can almost see it as if I’m standing there with my feet in the golden grass.”
“Magic’s not real,” The Doctor argued, which earned him a well placed elbow to the ribs from Jenny. “The universe isn’t princes and magic kisses.” Again, he received a second elbow, this time from Amy.
“Like the Pandorica?” River smiled slyly. Her eyes twinkled. “Or Neverland?”
The Doctor grunted. “Neverland is not on the second star to the left and straight on ‘til morning!”
“It’s the second star to the right,” Amy corrected.
“Quiet you.”
“Actually, he’s right,” Jenny smirked. “James Barrie got it all wrong, it’s actually in the Wendy Galaxy, in the Panlabyrinth Quadrant. And there are no stars in that galaxy.” She touched Freya’s nose. “I take it you’ve never been?”
Freya shook her head, eyes growing at an alarming rate. “Have you?”
“Dad?” Jenny grinned. “Care to take this one?”
“You can’t fly there, that’s another myth. But they do have anti-gravity pockets.” He clicked his tongue to the roof of his mouth. “Perhaps…you’d like to visit?”
“Serious?!”
“As serious as a supernova.” The Doctor snapped his fingers. “Go along, Pond. Wake your boys. We’ve got a trip to take.”
Amy bowed her head and took Freya’s hand. “Come with us?” she offered, looking to Jenny.
Jenny patted her father’s shoulder. “We’ll meet you in the TARDIS.”
The Doctor waited patiently as Amy woke a sleepy William from his bed and the four of them left to go wake Rory, shutting the door behind them. In the silence, The Doctor dropped to the chair in front of the laptop and propped his chin in his hands. “Ten minutes?”
“If it makes Amy feel any better, it’s the first and only appointment I’ve never made.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“She was the last song at the Singing Towers, Sweetie. And you know as well as I do that we meet when we meet. How was I to know The Library would be the last? And the first. I certainly couldn’t tell you about her then, it would’ve changed everything. But I knew she’d be in safe hands with Amy and Rory. And I knew, eventually, one of you would show up.”
“Have you ever told her?”
“What?”
“You know what.”
“That fezzes aren’t cool? Of course.”
“River!”
The image on screen seemed to sigh. “No. She doesn’t know I’m her mother. She doesn’t know you’re her father. I felt that was a story better left to tell in person, don’t you?”
The Doctor reached out to the screen, softly tracing the outline of his wife’s jaw. He watched her close her eyes, as if she could actually react to his touch. “The TARDIS misses you.”
“Give her my love.”
“I miss you.”
“Give her my love,” she repeated.
“I will.”
“You should go. They’re probably waiting.” She blew a soft kiss off the edge of her fingertips, reminding him of the video she’d left him so many years ago on the home box.
“We’ll talk again,” he promised.
“I’ll be waiting…second star to the left, straight on ‘til morning.”
“Right.”
River smiled. “Goodbye, Sweetie.”