Yowzah Oneshot Collection (3)

189(G)

             Sunshine After Rain

                       kashinoha

Professor River Song was having a bad hair day in the sense of everything but her actual hair.

Parole rejection was never a pretty thing. She had seen men break down and sob. Some fell into depression or attempted jailbreaks of spectacular stupidity. Of course, River had her dignity (which wasn't the only thing separating her from the rest of the lot here), but she felt frustrated nonetheless.

Here, nobody was given actual amnesty; Stormcage was reserved for the more serious perpetrators of the universe. The containment facility was home to those who were deemed a threat to civilized life unless under supervision or extreme limitation. Heck, they had made a whole planet just to contain the prison and had put humans—the most amoral species according to fifty-second century mores—as guards.

River was accredited with being Stormcage's most devious escapee. That in and of itself tended to be the primary source of scant humor among the guards and general prison staff, since she always checked herself back in after a night or two. There were running gags about her different escape methods, which included various forms of seduction, crying wolf, Houdini acts, and of course, the hallucinogenic lipstick.

Due to the gravity of her "crime," River already had twelve thousand consecutive life sentences. She had served a little over seven years in Stormcage already, which covered about .0008 percent of her total sentence. However, due to her 4,632 recorded escapes, the Containment board had deemed her unrepentant and had just decided to extend her sentence by another two thousand lives.

Now it didn't seem so funny.

x

"I'd appreciate it if you just call me when you need something," the Doctor grumbled, wiping some soot from his jacket and sneezing a few times subsequently. "At least you didn't defile a historic landmark this time."

"I always go for a real eye-catcher," River replied, flashing a set of white teeth through a face smeared with dusty ash. The likes of it clung to the rogue curls of her hair, turning them gray.

"What is it this time?" the Doctor asked, dusting his hands off. "Have the Sontarans invaded Bangladesh? Did Columbus land wrong again? Because I gave him the right—"

River shook her head, cutting him off mid-rant. More soot fell onto the glass floor below her. "Every time I drop by doesn't mark a disaster in time and the universe as we know it," she said. "Can't I say hello, sweetie?"

"But who erupts a volcano?" No sooner were the words out of his mouth the Doctor wrinkled his nose and seemed to consider something in his memory. "Oh wait, I did. Once."

"Fingalaptra was set to explode in a few weeks anyway," River replied. "Trust me sweetie, the Geerkings will be thanking me. I just turned their entire forest into fertile soil."

"You..." the Doctor waved a hand and shooed her off exasperatedly. "Oh go...have a shower now, or something. We can talk later; you're getting ash on the console."

x

She is named after the water. More often than not she would enter the TARDIS via the swimming pool in lieu of the front door. She often remembered the time on Quontalaf, where she and the Doctor had gone swimming in the pools of Senibbol: clear lakes miles wide and miles deep with giant stone statues of lions at the bottom. She had protested they go skinny dipping, until the Doctor had procured matching swimsuits of blue Quontalafrian silk. It had been magical, to say the least.