songofsong | Melody Malone and the Invisible Wife

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Melody Malone and the Invisible Wife

PROLOGUE

It was another dark and dangerous night on the streets of New York. Well, it was always one of those. And that was just the way I liked it.

After all, that was my profession. As a detective, those streets were what kept me alive, and for as long as the people of New York kept giving into their paranoia and fear, I would be in business. It seemed people would pay a high price to feel safe in their beds at night, and I too slept a little easier, knowing I had the villains caught and money in my pocket.

And what villains they were indeed. For I didn't deal with wanted criminals or the occasional ruffian the police failed to catch; my customers were of a more particular variety, and too were their problems. I could say it was because these particular clients paid me rather handsomely, or that I felt some kind of noble responsibility to keep New York safe - but none of that was true.

The reason I did it, was because I loved it.

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She listens to him closely as he speaks, eyes not daring to move from him. She's never met another person who knew about the Weeping Angels, who knew what horrifying creatures they were.

When she hears that pain in his voice, it triggers something in her and she tightly swallows the lump in her throat, adjusting her hand nervously on the gun before she quickly drops it. It had been an overreaction, she knows that, but anything that came close to this case, and it set her off.

"I've seen many things, in my line of work," she tells him quietly, dropping her gaze for a moment. "But I've never seen anything quite like them."

"Are you the praying type, Melody?" he asks her, continuing without truly waiting for an answer. "Then pray you never will."

The Doctor has seen many things, terrible things, but the Weeping Angels are some of the worst. A Dalek he can handle, something full of evil and hate. But the Weeping Angels are something else entirely, and they ripped his family from him.

"Melody," he says her name again then. "Please help me work out what's happened to me."

Her eyes remain downcast as he speaks, lost to the thoughts that had plagued her since this whole mystery began. It weighs heavy on her heart, and when he asks for her help, she slowly looks up, that heaviness seen in her eyes. She looks him over, the pitiful state he's in and somehow, it works.

"Alright," she then says quietly, before steeling her voice, hiding that vulnerability. She lifts her head, lips drawn into a determined line. "I'll help you, if you can help me."

There's an almost palpable relief when she agrees, and he nods a little, thankful. He doesn't know what she could possibly want help with, but help is sort of his thing, so he can at least try.

"Of course. Yeah. Of course. What can I do?"

At his question, Melody glances back towards the file, touching it briefly before she closes up again. “Well, first of all, you can stop making a mess on my floor,” she says, eyes flicking pointedly to the small pond forming underneath the chair. With that, she pushes away from the desk, stepping through another door into the next room. She very quickly returns with a towel, suggesting the next room along is just as small, and she drops it in her lap as she walks past him, going to fetch her cigarette from the tray.

Leaning back against her desk again, she holds it out in front of her, one arm folded, watching him through the steady wisp of smoke that joined the ceiling, forming her very own set of clouds to match the storm outside.

“So, you really don’t remember anything since we last met?” she asks casually, setting the cigarette in her mouth, pinched between two scarlet fingernails.

The Doctor takes the towel and quickly wipes it over his head, soaking up a little of the water from his hair. It does very little though, his clothes sodden through, and he's begun to shiver as it permeates his skin.

Her question brings a shake of his head. "You gave me that card earlier, next thing I was in another street. But that's not the point. I shouldn't be here at all. I can't possibly be here Melody. And I have no idea how I got here."

"What, here in New York?" she asks, trying to make sense of his refusal. "Well, unless you dropped in out of the sky, there are only so many ways you got here." She considers him again, thinking it through, that detective mind at work, separating the clues, analysing the evidence. "If you're having blackouts, it's pretty likely you just forgot how you arrived. Have you checked your wallet? Check for ticket stubs, gas receipts, anything like that."

Here in New York, yes, here in whatever weird fabricated world this is too. But he won't mention that, telling people they're fictional doesn't tend to endear them towards you.

Still, her suggestions make him shake his head.

"No. No I don't travel that way. I don't have a wallet, and anything I do have is gone. So here I am, just me and a wet bowtie to my name. No way of getting back, no way of working it out, reel him up and let him go." He sighs, and rubs his temples, trying not to get too frustrated.

"I'm not from around here," he says evenly. "I'm from along way away."

"Yes, I did notice the accent," she remarks, pointing the stub of her cigarette at him in gesture. "Not often you hear that around these parts." Of course, herself included. She's an oddity in this city, in more ways than one.

"Alright, calm down, honey." She waves a hand at him as if he's about to have a full on breakdown in her office, when all he's done is sigh. "We'll work this thing out. It's what I do."

She pushes away from her desk, setting a clean, empty glass on the corner nearest him. "Here," she says, uncapping her bottle and pouring in just enough to cover the bottom. She's not giving him more than he needs, it's a precious commodity.

"Accent?" he frowns before realising. It's funny, he supposes he does sound English. He doesn't tend to really think about it. Still, 1938, England might as well be as far away as the stars.

He looks at the glass as she lays it out, and shakes his head a moment, ready to refuse with an 'I don't really drink' comment. But he's so cold, bones hurting from shivering from the rain, his damp clothes still heavy against him. So he reaches out and takes the glass, consuming its contents in one quick swig, a slight pulled face after it. Might warm him up at least.

"If you know anywhere I could find a bed for the night..." he asks. What do people usually do? He knows what he usually does, but that seems to be off the menu. Not so easy without his old ship or a handy screwdriver to do the job.

Bringing the bottle back towards her, she refills her glass with a noisy slosh, giving herself a little more than she gave him. Tough luck. Spinning the cap back on, she returns it to the messily arranged desk, papers and newspaper clippings covering the majority of the scratched surface.

With a glass of scotch in one hand and a smoking cigarette in the other, she looks like a typical detective from a motion picture - except she's all woman, made quite clear if not by what she's wearing, then the way she positions herself on the corner of her desk.

"Plenty of places," she replies. "But if you've got no wallet, I'm guessing you've got no cash either." She says this with full knowledge, and she raises a pointed eyebrow at him, because she knows what's coming next.

"I heard Central Park's benches are nice this time of year."

He can't help but notice the way she sits, the way the half light in the room reflects against her skin. He aches with how much he misses her. It's so much easier to pretend it isn't true when she's not right there in front of him.

His question hadn't been some attempt to stay with her, but rather a hope that she might know somewhere he could go. Her answer makes him dip his head a little, and he nods, trying not to listen to the way the rain hits loudly against her window.

"Yes, of course. One with nature. What could be better?" He smiles, or at least tries to smile, and reaches up to pinch the bridge of his nose.

Rolling her eyes somewhat, she gets up from her desk, taking one final drag of the cigarette before she stubs it out. She doesn't know what else he expects. This is New York. It's the Depression. They'd charge you to sleep in the gutter if they could.

Turning her back to him, she stands at the window, opening the slats to gaze out the grim scene outside. A setting so dark, it's almost void of colour. The rain continues to thrash down her window, hitting it with such a force, it almost doesn't seem real.

She says nothing all the while, her arms folded, one hand nursing her glass that she occasionally sips from, all while miraculously leaving no lipstick stains on the rim.

She knows what she's going to do, and she's annoyed at herself for it, which is why she's biding her time. Of course she's not going to throw him out on the street. If he has information on her case, then she needs him, and if she lets him go now, there's a chance he might not even remember this encounter if he keeps having blackouts. She can't afford to let him out of her sight.

Sighing, she turns her head aside slightly, looking back at his pitiful state. "Alright. Fine. You can stay here til we find out what the hell's happening to you," she says, as if he's been begging her.

He’s not really sure what he expected, but it wasn’t that. It’s disconcerting, he’s usually the man with all the answers, or at least some of them, but not today, today all he has is questions, and each of them bigger and more confusing than the last.

“Thank you,” he says sincerely, his hands clasped around the empty glass as though he might get warmth from it. He still shivers, and he looks down to where there are still pools of water beside each of his feet.

“I just need to know if anything strange has been happening lately. Anything unusual. Might help me work out how I got here.”

Slowly, she begins to frown, beginning to piece together a possible answer, one that's as unusual as it can get. "The Weeping Angels," she says quietly, looking towards him once more, her eyes carefully studying her. "It's said that they can displace people in time. Send them back, send them away. You said you'd heard of the Weeping Angels. Maybe they got to you too."

The 'too' is a slip up, and one she doesn't notice.

It’s a statement that makes his head lift, attention suddenly sharp and on her. If not for the fact he’s apparently talking to a fictional character it could almost make sense. He doesn’t recall an Angel, but then they aren’t always seen, they can get you before you even know they were ever there, and it’s far too late to do a thing about it. But the Angels displaced in time, not across realities, so how is he here?

“I think I’ve come a little further than the reach of an Angel,” he tells her on another sigh. But even if she doesn’t pick up the comment she made, he does, and he watches her, her back, the way the delicate fabric sits on her skin, trying not to think about what lies beneath.

“Said by who?” he asks. What does she know? What has she already seen, because if he’s sure of anything, it’s that she’s seen something.

The returned questions makes her blink, uncomfortable, like it's something she doesn't want to say, or isn't supposed to. She looks back towards him like she can't quite fathom what he's asked her, before she defaults to covering it up.

"It doesn't matter," she says, shrugging in a way that exposes her shoulder again, and she gently pulls the gown back over her skin. "What makes you so sure it wasn't one of those things?"

“Everything matters,” he replies, but he doesn’t push it, not for now at least. Instead he leans forward, elbows against his legs, a slight squelch as water in his clothing moves.

“Because I haven’t just been displaced in time,” he tells her. It’s a bold move, perhaps, but if she knows about the Angels at all, if she’s not fazed by their very existence, then maybe he can risk it. More than that he knows this person, this character, it’s based on River. If she has even the slightest of her about her, then maybe she’ll grasp this.

“There’s a theory,” he starts, “that everything we do, everything that could possibly ever happen, every story we ever read, it’s all real. Somewhere, it happens. Another universe, split off from our own. It’s all there. If you can dream it, then somewhere it exists.”

The way he sits forward calls her attention, and she turns herself from the window, listening carefully as she nurses the glass of scotch in front of her. She listens, and for a moment, she might believe it. But then she laughs quietly, shaking her head and going to finish the remainder of her drink. After that conversation, she probably needs more of it.

"What.. so you're telling me you come from another universe?" she asks as she slowly walks around the desk, resting one hand on the edge as she slinks her weight against it, one hips cocked while she points with a finger off her empty scotch glass.

It's a direct question, but then he supposes his statement had been too. He doesn't answer at first, rather just looks at her, watching the way the fabric of her... negligee falls as she shifts.

Maybe she expects him to laugh it off, to say no of course not. But he does anything but.

"Yes," he tells her instead, one simple word.

"Yes I think I have."

Both eyebrows raise as if to say 'we've got a live one here' and she sets the glass back down on her desk with a clunk. That's made her job considerably harder, and it also makes her wonder just how useful he's going to be in her case. If he thinks he's fallen out of another universe, how can she believe anything he says about Costello's men?

"Doctor," she begins, slowly turning back to look at him, shaking a stray curl out of her face. "I'm Melody Malone. I'm a private detective. What on earth makes you think I can do anything about your situation?"

Whether she means the fact he's lost, or unhinged, isn't clarified.

It probably shouldn't make him smile, but somehow it does. There's a touch of a laugh on his lips, and he looked at her for a long moment before answering quite simply.

"Because you're Melody Malone. You're a private detective," he echoes her own words back at her. "What, not afraid of a little challenge, are you?"

She pauses, looking at him for a long moment before a telling smirk spreads over her lips. It's a smile that as close to River Song as he'll ever get. "Alright," she says slowly, clearly liking how he talked. He might be crazy, but he's not an idiot.

However, she's also crazy, because she's going to keep this guy, and she's just going to pray and hope that whatever information he has on the Weeping Angels and the Costello family is worth spending time with a nut job.

She points at him, waving her finger just slightly. "You'd better not be wasting my time, Doctor."

Oh but doesn't it just ache. He wants to shake her by the shoulders, to tell her to wake up, be who she's supposed to be. But she's just not, is she? She's not River Song. He wants to do much more than shake her too, especially when she stands there looking like she's pulled a page out of Marlene Dietrich's book.

"Wouldn't dream of it," he tells her, his head lifting off to look towards the window as a loud clap of thunder rings outside and seems to almost shake the building at its very foundations.

The thunder draws her head towards the window, and she watches as the rain rolls on down the glass in a constant stream. "Looks like it's going to be a bad one tonight," she remarks, then adding through a sigh. "It's always a bad one." She glances back towards him, to how he still sits and shivers in her chair, the towel having done barely more than mop up his face.

"You're shivering, honey. We need to get you out of those clothes. Let me see if I've got anything warmer for you." She gives him a small smile before she steps on past him, once again retreating into the next room. She has clothes he could wear, she's known that since he set foot in her office, but she'd been reluctant to offer them. But he was in such a state, she couldn't let a silly thing like sentiment get in the way of this poor man's health.

A few minutes later, and she's back in the doorway, holding a small pile of clothes in her hands. They're neatly folded, flattened from storage, and have a faint smell of wardrobe to them.

"I think you're about the same size, isn't that lucky?" she says as she approaches him, offering him the pile.

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