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River crouched near the stall entrance, and carded through a box of illegal chronometric control chips that the stall's proprietor had disguised as vintage comic books. Her eyes stung from straining to read their covers in the half-light. The Nightbound Market of Rukbat VII was anchored on the dark side of a ramshackle old moon, which was all very well and good for their consumer branding, but which made it bloody impossible to find anything without the benefit of a headlamp or extensive xenogenetic modification. The Amazing Quantum Girl blurred into Boeshane Force Five blurred into Brigadier: the Legend of UNIT, and River could feel the beginnings of a headache brewing in the back of her skull.
There had to be something suitable in here somewhere. She wasn't going to be able to fix her vortex manipulator without a top-of-the-line data shunt.
“Is this all you've got?” River asked, glancing up from the merchandise.
Only the shopkeeper wasn't paying her the slightest bit of attention. She was staring off at some drama in the square.
“I'll be damned,” the shopkeeper muttered. Rhetorically, River presumed, though something more literal could certainly be arranged if this person remained uncooperative.
River rose. Recovered. Grinned. Felt her toes curl in anticipation of the really marvellous lie she was about to come out with. This time River could be the Lady Comptroller of a pan-galactic manufacturing fiefdom, or the heiress to an ancient samba school. Impersonation was always easier when she got to stand like a woman who knew all the right steps.
“Perhaps you're not aware of whom you're dealing with,” River said, with the easy confidence of a woman with several decades worth of adventuring under her belt, and an x-tonic radiation blaster stuffed in her bra. “I believe that--”
The shopkeeper cut River off with a hearty nudge in the ribs.
“Hey, look at that fool over there,” she chortled, pointing out into the darkness with one webbed, mottled hand. “Tourists, eh? He'll sweat himself sick in that get-up.”
River followed the line of the shopkeeper's gesture, preparing to be underwhelmed. Her gaze passed over a robotics stall, a stray land-jellyfish, a Trion school group, before it tripped and stumbled against the sight of a man in a gaudy velvet suit and his cheerful little wisp of a companion. Both of them were far too over-dressed to be stumbling around in the market dome's heated, tropical atmosphere.
River blinked.
“That man is not supposed to be here,” she said. Because it was true. More or less.
River wasn't supposed to know that she'd never met this Doctor, since that was a spoiler, and spoilers were so dull, but she knew anyway, because her love, her darling, the greatest trickster in all the vast and chaotic cosmos, was an absolutely rubbish liar when under the influence of anything stronger than a Pimm's Cup.
The shopkeeper patted River on the shoulder. Very touchy-feely, this one.
“Oh, don't worry, love. He looks like a bit of a looney, but the eccentrics are always harmless.”
“Right. Harmless.” River swallowed down her panic, and grabbed up a drab piece of cloth from the side-table. “Can I try this hood on? Thanks. You're darling.”
She wrapped the thick cotton around her shoulders and did her best to think unspectacular thoughts. No pan-galactic manufacturing viper, no samba school aristocrat. Just an ordinary, common shopper, shopping in a totally unmemorable way, ho-hum.
Naturally, the Doctor took her attempt to fade into the background as a cue to walk right up behind her and glower down at the box of not-comic-books from over her shoulder.
“Well. Hurry up, won't you? I've a TARDIS to repair, and you're blocking the way.”
River nearly jumped out of her skin. This Doctor was a child, it would feel like cradle robbing, his breath was hot on the back of her neck and he didn't know the terrible things she'd done, she had to keep her curiosity under control, but oh, it would be so easy to impress him.
No. River had to be ordinary. What did ordinary people do with their hands? How did they make their faces so placid and dull? A smirk itched beneath the surface of her skin and this was worse than a dozen deadly firefights. She was fidgeting with her skirt and staring at a table and ugh, surely she looked too idiotic not to be noticeable.
“Er-- yes. Hurrying up. Yes, I will.” She picked up an issue of Judoon Panic and hop-skipped out of the Doctor's way.
The Doctor's companion sidled up beside her, clearly used to covering for her mentor's social gaffes. It was rather adorable. If River weren't incognito, she would have pinched their cheeks.
“Don't mind him,” the girl said in sotto voice, her expression all doe-eyed sincerity. “It's not his fault. I think he was raised on a planet without manners. He really is the most wonderful man.”
“I'll, ah, keep that in mind.”
The Doctor spent several minutes fussing over the control chips, before he finally threw up his hands and stalked off into the night, making dire pronouncements about the state of 51st century technology. The girl trailed obligingly after him, and River let out a breath that she hadn't known she'd been holding.
River pulled the hood back, smoothed her cloak over her shoulder, and drew the x-tonic blaster with a clean, practiced movement.
“Now then.” River considered her weapon, and bared her canines in a sharp, bright smile. “As I saying: perhaps you don't know whom you're dealing with. I'm Colonel Sand of the sector defence force, here to gather tech for a top-secret mission. You wouldn't want to be mixed up in matters that aren't your concern, would you? So here's what you're going to do.”