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The old saying goes that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’; and every so often River idly wondered if she should trade in her blue diary and trusty fountain pen for a camera and photo album. Not because she wasn’t good with the written word –she was, almost as good as the Doctor with the spoken ones- but because there were occasions when it would be nice to hold tangible, visible evidence in her hands of the things she never wanted to forget. Amy’s fierce grin as she watched her daughter’s precision shooting… or Rory’s steadfast gaze, exasperated and proud, when he lectured her on intergalactic safety.
(Not to mention: the beauty of an alien planet with three suns setting, a screaming horde behind them, and the Doctor’s hand in hers as she grabbed it and hissed: “stop talking already and run!”)
Yes; there were times when she positively longed for a camera, for one little click to make a memory live forever. She’d even hinted as much, more than a few times; but aside from the one time when his eyes lit with a momentary gleam, he never did take the bait to suggest a trip to Delta 9’s intergalactically famous media store, as she’d hoped he would.
(In fact: the more she mentioned it, he stopped responding at all. It had been a few years since she’d tried; and the last time he’d merely shrugged, gave her diary a surreptitious glance and muttered: “oh, I’m sure you’ll figure out how to get images of what you want eventually. Have you checked around the TARDIS, River? People have left all sorts of things around here… maybe you’ll find something useful.”)
There were exactly fifty-nine rooms within the TARDIS allocated to house the junk the Doctor had collected over the centuries; and each time she was aboard, River prowled through them, one by one. It was something about the off-handed way he’d said it -about looking around- that made her think there might already be a camera there with her name on it… and her search paid off. Sitting on an abandoned wardrobe like it was waiting for her -and actually, knowing the TARDIS, it might have been- was a sleek black camera case, a carrier bag beside it full of filters and additional lenses. River swooped down on them, fingers trembling with excitement as she nervously cradled a 51st century replica of a 21st century SLR –reengineered to make human error a thing of the past- between her hands.
For some, it would be an item of nostalgia, but for her… oh, it was perfect. Perfect. And she would take the perfect pictures with it, be able to record her memories in photographs to last a lifetime.
That feeling; that happy, giddy excited feeling whenever she picked up the camera lasted…two weeks. If so much.
Apparently, she’d forgotten something very important.
She’d always been terrible at taking pictures.
Oh, she’d tried in the past. Easy enough to blame Melody Pond’s lack of talent on her youth and the technology of the 1960s; but Mels had been equally as bad. Chopping off heads indiscriminately, her hands trembling in an uncontrollable -and unusual for her- palsy. Not to mention: she had a positive talent for being too trigger-happy, letting the shutter flash in that moment right before everyone was smiling; creating a collection of pictures with her friends frozen in an array of horrifying grimaces and facial contortions.
When Mels had ruined the pictures of Amy’s seventeenth birthday, she’d declared herself a menace never to be allowed again near a camera; and her friends had agreed immediately. (In fact, Rory had even tacked the words bloody awful on there, shaking his head fondly. She’d spared a nanosecond to hope he was just referring to her ability with photography and not in general; before she decided that it didn’t matter too much, not when her Dad smiled.)
But regeneration, the Doctor had told her cheerfully while she was still weak in a hospital bed, can change everything. Appearance. Colouring. Tastes. Perceptions.
Somehow, River had convinced herself that even her abilities might be different. River Song might be able to do things that Melody and Mels had never dreamed of… But apparently not. It was her failing; and River Song, Mels Zucker, Melody Pond... no matter what she was called, she was a bad, bad photographer.
“You lied,” River muttered aloud, sitting cross-legged in her cell at Stormcage and flicking through the images stored on her SD card. Motion blur after motion blur, interspersed with too-dark-to-distinguish-anything shots, and shaky candids (some headless) of Amy and Rory having tea in their garden.
“You said,” she insisted, fighting her urge to smash the camera into the ground, “that you are 100% guaranteed against human error? Is your problem with that I’m not human, you stupid piece of -“
“Language, River!”
She spun around to see the TARDIS parked just outside her cell and the Doctor lounging insolently against it, watching her intently. She raised an eyebrow as he came closer, soniced the door open and held out his hand; and she put her fingers gently into his, pulled him closer until she was standing and could stretch up on tiptoe to press her lips softly against his own. He held her tight, so tight she could feel his heartbeats against hers; and for a moment River revelled in the sensations he brought up. The delicious roughness of tweed against her cheek and the corners of a bowtie a little too close to her eye; the softness of lips brushing over her forehead and a sharp jawbone nestled on top her head. His smell –candied ginger and old books and Time, itself- and the warmth of his hands caressing down her spine, splaying over the small of her back.
“I’ve heard you use worse language when you’re tinkering with the TARDIS,” she grumbled good-naturedly. “Just because it’s not English doesn’t mean that no one will understand your swearing.”
“There’s a limit on the people who speak Gallifreyan,” he protested.
“And you never think that the TARDIS is one of them? It’s no wonder she likes me better, when you get angry and call her internal workings a–“
“Hush!” He pulled away and put a finger on her lips, giving a furtive glance to where his ship sat open behind them. He brought his face closer to River, hissing confidentially: “she’ll hear you!”
“She’s already heard you; many times before.”
“Well,” the Doctor gulped, “she might be a little angrier this time. Considering...” He twisted his bowtie between his fingers, studiously not meeting her eyes. River sighed, walking over to smooth her hand gently over the doors.
“He doesn’t mean the bad things, dear,” she crooned, feeling the hum of the TARDIS beneath her fingers. “You know our Doctor. Frightfully impatient, isn’t he?”
He sputtered incoherently; but she could catch a few words in there... mostly variants of pot and teakettle. River ducked her head, grinning. Sometimes, he was so easy to tease.
“I didn’t even hear the TARDIS when you landed,” she said, turning around to face him. “Did you finally remember to leave the brakes off?”
“Might have done,” he answered with a pleased smile, tugging at his lapels. The TARDIS made a slight groan; and his smile faded.
“Or...” he looked away, shiftily, “I might have disconnected them by accident. And by disconnected, I mean I might have... broken them.”
River sighed.
“They seemed to be malfunctioning!” he protested. “Sticking! You can’t have sticky brakes! So I went to check them, might have put a little too much force, and... well, they came off.”
She sighed again, rolling her eyes. “Poor things were probably exhausted. They don’t want to be used constantly for a thousand years, sweetie.”
He ignored her. “All I need is to find a new regulator switchboard and a set of zybern cables to connect everything together, and-“ he clapped his hands, grinning “-fixed! No more problems, brakes in working order again...”
“At least until they try to perish again from constant overuse.”
“The brakes,” he insisted testily, “will be fine. And you have no right to lecture me about how I treat appliances. Were you just yelling at a camera, River?”
“Are you on the side of inanimate objects now?”
“If they’re blameless.”
“This,” River said scornfully, casting a baleful glare at her camera, “isn’t. It’s supposed to work. The easiest camera in the universe, taking great shots regardless of human error! It’s supposed to be the best... and it’s still rubbish!”
“Ah.” She looked up sharply to see the Doctor watching her with a very slight smile on his face. “You found a camera, then. Reengineered 51st century; from their vintage collection?”
River nodded. The Doctor tilted his head to the side; obviously ruminating and calculating what to say so hard she could almost feel his brain working.
“It’s a nice piece, top of the line. But let me guess?” He grinned at her, clearly enjoying her discomfort. “You were thinking that if you shot it, the camera might be persuaded to work better for you?”
“No,” River snapped. “I wasn’t planning to shoot it. Maybe... drop it. Repeatedly.”
“Oh, my bad girl...” The Doctor slid his arm around her waist, pulling her into the TARDIS with him. He gently unwound the camera strap from her fingers, setting it carefully away from her. “You’re always such a threat against the things that oppose you.”
“You don’t usually mind that.”
“I suppose I don’t,” he admitted, setting the TARDIS in flight, carefully looking at the screen rather than at her. “Shouldn’t like that, but I do, a bit. I like how involved you get in making things work for you.”
Her lips were drawn into a sulky frown, as she tried to work out if he was teasing her. (She much preferred it to be the other way around. It was much more fun to be the mocker, as opposed to the one being mocked.)
But there was a calm to him, a willingness to indulge her that she had rarely seen from him after his first, tentative trips to Stormcage... And that let her know that he wasn’t teasing; not completely, anyway. And he was older than her, this trip. Even without synching diaries, she could tell.
“Why are you so intent on having a camera?” he asked as he finally turned to give her his full attention. “You’ve never seemed like a photography type, River. It’s always been books you’ve got on hand; not pictures like some sort of photojournalist.”
“I’m not,” River answered, walking to the console and pushing him aside gently so she could correct their flight pattern. He pouted. She ignored him; nudging the plotter a millimetre to the right, so they could avoid hitting the space station he seemed to have been aiming for.
“Not interested in it, exactly,” she continued, her words coming out absently as she focussed on how she was flying. “It’s just that... we see so many things, you and I. And sometimes I wish I could be one of those people who wander around with a camera in their hands.”
“Tourists?”
She gave him a look.
“I wish that I could describe everything. Not just with words. I wish that I could take a picture to really capture it, so that everyone could see. I tried explaining to Rory and Amy about the flora on Gregaa... the crystalline flowers and the purple skies?” He nodded, reaching one hand to the console, doubtlessly to help; and pulled it back swiftly when she glared at him.
“I had to tell them we’d go together, another time. Amy kept saying it just sounded cold, the way I was explaining it... and I couldn’t make her understand how beautiful it was. How you could look at it and see not just the elements of nature, but how the sun shines through the flowers... the shading of the sky.”
River sighed. “I wish I was one of those people who can see the beauty of the world and people around them, who is able to capture it on film to remember forever.”
The Doctor gave her an unreadable look, brow furrowed and delicate eyebrows smooshing together.
“Well…” he said mildly, “but we’re not.”
“We’re not, what?”
“Time Lords. We’re no good with cameras.” At River’s incredulous stare, he hastened to correct himself.
“There are always anomalies,” he continued. “One person in a generation who can make the technology work like that. But it was a rare gift. I don’t have it.”
“And here I thought you could do anything.”
“I’m serious, River!”
“So am I.”
He grumbled and pouted in a show of exasperation; and River found herself grinning at him, her mood lightening.
“Alright,” she conceded. “Explain it to me then; why Time Lords can’t take pictures. Great and mighty race, unable to use a little technology to freeze-frame a moment in time?”
“But that’s it exactly,” the Doctor said, pulling River close so he could stare down into her face intently. “We can’t do that, freeze time.
“If you can see everything –everything that ever happened and ever will- when you look at an object-“
Her mind was examining what he’d said, running and leaping toward the conclusion; and she beat him to the end of his sentence.
“Then what exactly are you taking a picture of? The then, or the now, or the could-be...” Her voice trailed off, and he nodded, encouragingly.
“So that’s why I take such bad pictures? It’s in my genetic make-up that there’s something I’m incapable of doing?” She couldn’t help her incredulous tone, and he began to laugh. Pulled her closer, brushing his lips softly over her forehead, the tip of her nose until he finally pressed his lips against hers. Softly; as though he was afraid she might break.
“You could say that,” he chuckled, his forehead against hers. “One thing you’re not good at, River, as opposed to everything else that you’re capable of.”
“But…” she sputtered, “then you knew all along! That I wouldn’t be able to make a camera work.”
“We do have certain advantages,” admitted the Doctor, “meeting in the order we do. When I was younger, I wanted so badly to impress you so I made a little trip to Delta 9… Well. That camera was the worst anniversary present I ever got you… I suppose that if you don’t know that now, you will do. Eventually. Never did that again; even that carnivorous orchid was better…” He hastily cut off his rambling at the look of amused irritation on her face.
“But yes, I did know –do know- that you’re hopeless with a camera, River. In this case, you’re far more Time Lord than human.”
She didn’t resent the Time Lord traits that she had. Not really. But, River thought resentfully, this one she could have lived without.
“If it makes you feel better though…” he was watching the grumpy play of emotions on her face, hoping he could alleviate her frown, “you’ll find a way to capture the images you want; I know you will. A way to save them forever.”
She pulled away from him slightly, eyes narrowed as she thought about his choice of words. “You said that before, but I didn’t think… That sounds like a spoiler, Doctor. Is it?”
“Well...” He shrugged, face lit with amusement. “Let’s just say that you know someone who happens to be quite good at drawing and will –in your future- take a lot of enjoyment from teaching you.”
“In my future. But not his, I’m guessing.”
He said it then, giggling like a child as he sing-songed the word. “Spoilers, River. But I suppose I can tell you that art was considered compulsory education on Gallifrey... and I was excellent at it.”
She rolled her eyes before pulling him into her; her fingers sliding through the dark, silky hair at his nape as she kissed him. Nibbled for just a moment on his bottom lip before sucking it into her mouth and soothing the bites with her tongue; and his arms tightened around her waist, hearts beating a rapid thud-thud-thud-thud against her own.
“It’s a pity that art was compulsory; but TARDIS repair wasn’t,” River murmured breathlessly a moment later. He scowled, before breaking into a grin.
“How about a trade then? We’ve got some cables to find, and a set of brakes to reconnect; and perhaps my wife-“ his voice dropped, squeaking endearingly as it always did when he used that word, “will be so kind as to assist me on that? And then, I think I might know of a room here on the TARDIS –second floor, fourth door to the left- that might already set up with art supplies...”
He paused as if to give River a chance to reply; but her only response was to drop the camera with a sharp thunk onto the floor before kissing him again. There’d be time enough later to put the camera back in its case and return it to the TARDIS storage room.