Yowzah Oneshot Collection (1)

81(M)

The Doctor doesn’t want to open his eyes.

He should be dead, he thinks. Why isn’t he dead? Perhaps if he just keeps his eyes closed, he will be.

“Sweetie,” says a soft voice, somewhere close to his ear. A hand runs through his hair. Short hair, he thinks, frowning. That’s not right.

The voice chuckles. “Come on, sweetie. I know you’re awake.”

He gives in and opens his eyes then, because why is she calling him sweetie?

He’s lying on ... nothing, it would appear. Everything is a white haze except for the woman kneeling over him. She smiles, dark hair falling forward over her dark eyes.

The Doctor squints, then sits and surveys his surroundings and himself. This is not the body he had when he — but no, he can’t think about that.

“Am I dead?” he queries, just in case.

She laughs then. “No, you’re not dead. Far from it.” She produces a mirror out of nowhere and holds it in front of him. “You’re a whole new you.”

She’s right, he sees. His hair is shorter even than he thought. Blue eyes are staring back at him from a visage clearly dominated by his sizeable nose, with equally sizeable ears on either side. He makes a face, poking at them, and the woman laughs again.

“Alright,” he says agitatedly. He pushes the mirror away and looks at the woman more closely. “Who are you, anyway?”

She sits back, gazing at him fondly. “Well, Doctor,” she says. “I’m River.”

He is made to eat and drink and bathe before she tells him anything else. He is not hungry or thirsty and the bathing especially seems superfluous. He gets the feeling that River just likes watching him, though he can’t fathom why.

“Right,” he declares, sitting down in his fluffy dressing gown on the porch which has magically appeared, on the edge of a beach by an empty grey sea. “I’m clean and fed. I’d like to know where I am.”

River is gazing out at the ocean. “You’re in a computer data core,” she says. “In a virtual reality, so to speak. The TARDIS is badly damaged – she sent you here while she fixes herself up. Once she’s healed, she’ll whisk you away again.” There is regret in her voice as she utters that last sentence. He might have wondered about that if there weren’t more pressing issues.

“How do you know about the TARDIS?” he demands.

River smiles. “I just do,” she says. “You’ll find that I just know a lot of things, Doctor. Best not to question it.”

“And why not?”

She stands, raising a finger to bop him on the nose. “Because it’ll drive you absolutely mad when I don’t answer.” Without further comment, she steps off the porch and walks down to the sea, letting her dress fall onto the sand as she goes. Naked, she runs into the water and begins to swim.

The Doctor shrugs out of his dressing gown and follows.

A few strong strokes of his arms and he has caught up with her. She makes no comment except to splash him playfully; he retaliates and they take a few minutes to thoroughly soak each other before drifting into a companionable silence, swimming side-by-side away from the shore.

“You said we were in a computer,” the Doctor muses after a while, looking up at the white sky.

“Mm-hmm.”

“So none of this is real.”

“That would really depend on how you define ‘real’, Doctor.”