strangetrip | [For River Song] In Need of Tudoring

"Technically it's Professor Song. Or Doctor Song. But why don't you just call me River." She was at one of the tables and she had a book too but it was blue and battered and didn't look like a school book.

"And I don't know what we'll be studying either, since I don't know what you already know or where exactly you're from."

So first they should probably get to know each other a bit.

"You sure?" It felt wrong calling her just River. "River," he says, as if taking the name out for a test run. It felt a little less wrong after he said it somehow.

"Well," Peter says, adjusting his notebook and book so he can hold them against his chest with a single arm. "I'm Peter Parker." He extends a hand out for River to shake. "I'm from Earth, and the year's 2017. I'm a high school sophomore and I'm taking honors classes."

A beat.

"Or I was taking honors classes." Not so much anymore.

She shook the hand, smiling at his discomfort with her name. "You can call me Professor if that's more comfortable. But please not miss."

Or technically it was missus.

"I can do earth history," She gestured for him to sit. "What were you enjoying most in history class before you came here?"

"Okay, Professor," Peter says, nodding, his lips pressed tightly together. Professor comes out a little easier than just River, though, and Peter finds that he likes the way it makes him feel, too. Like he's actually in college, instead of just taking AP History.

"I'm in Civics right now, but next semester I was supposed to be taking a course in the History of Southeast Asia." Technically, next semester would probably be right now for him. "I was pretty excited about it because most of the history courses I've taken so far have been New York state history, US History, or World History, and most of the later stuff definitely had a pro-American bent."

But that's not really an answer to her question. Peter breifly dampens his lips, the continues: "I guess I'm just interested in learning more about the history of other regions and understanding their perspective of major world events."

"Well I'm not American, in case the accent didn't give it away." Strictly speaking she wasn't entirely human either, but she didn't tell him that.

"So a non American perspective is pretty well guaranteed." A laugh, as she considered what he'd said. "How about you tell me something you learned but have more questions about and I'll see if I can't surprise you."

"Yeah," Peter says, with a smile. "I figured."

Peter sets his books down on the table and takes a seat near River. "I'm actually kind of interested in learning more about the Second Sino-Japanese War," Peter admits. "It's one of those things that always gets glossed over because my teachers always want to focus on World War I or World War II instead." Not that those aren't important too, because they are, but he'd studied that relentlessly throughout junior high.

"One could argue that world war II started with the incident at the Marco Polo Bridge and not when a nasty little man with a toothbrush mustache invaded Poland."

It's possible River has opinions about Hitler.

"When it was just Japan invading Manchuria no one cared except the Chinese and eventually the Russians."

"Yeah," Peter agrees. "I don't know, it's just." Peter briefly presses his lips together. "I mean, I get these things are probably more complicated than I'll ever understand, but I just don't get why things like these can happen and people don't really care until it's them that's being affected by it."

Peter lets out a little frustrated huff. "I mean, North Korea. I get that it's really complicated, but the prison camps there? It's awful. And I understand not wanting to start a war, but like -- when I read this book about the one guy who escaped Camp 14 who basically couldn't understand human kindness because he was brought up to distrust and report on everyone, I--"

Peter's mouth hangs open for a moment, like he's not really sure what he wants to say.

"I don't get it," he finishes, running a hand along the side of his head. "I don't get why we do nothing."

Edited (thanks, affect/effect) 2018-02-24 03:38 (UTC)

"Fear mostly," River said after a long moment. "That and humans can be quite... blind to things they don't want to see."

She had a pot of tea handy and moved to pour a cup for herself and then one for Peter in case he wanted it as she continued talking.

"But then not everyone CAN see what you just described until its too late. The people who can are the ones who try to do something. Not nations, nations never stopped a war, but men and women. And while one man can save world, those men are very few and far between."

Peter takes the cup of tea from her appreciatively. "Thank you," he says quietly, and he blows on his tea a few times before he finally takes his first sip.

"I think the really thing that gets me is... what makes a guy like Kim Jong-un, or his dad think that he's right to do the things he does? What other smaller things can we convince ourselves are right if a person's capable of convincing themselves of the righteousness of something like that?"

And somehow, Peter's mind wanders back to the whole fight in Germany. The one he'd been so excited to be a part of because he could finally prove himself to Mr. Stark. The one where one half of the Avengers were fighting the other half.

"I don't know if the Avengers exist on your Earth," Peter says, "But if you don't know them, they're a bunch of a superheroes. I'm one, too. A superhero, not an Avenger," Peter quickly clarifies. He sets the tea down on the table, and gestures to himself. "I'm Spider-Man."

Not that that was important, but it felt like it was something he should say.

"Not too long ago, half the Avengers were fighting the other half of the Avengers. Mr. Stark didn't give me all the details, he just said that Captain America was protecting this friend of his who had done some bad things and wouldn't hand him over." Peter frowns. "And he told me that Captain America was wrong, and that he thought he was right -- and that that was what made him dangerous."

Peter himself isn't really sure where he's going with this, or why he even decided to tell his teacher of all of 15 minutes about the Avengers and Iron Man and Captain America and this fight that was almost a year old now. And he wishes he did because there's a weird kinda silence out in the air now and he doesn't really have any idea how to fill it.

She hadn't heard of Spiderman but she knew what a hero was, and a man who often thought he was right. She'd married one.

"We all think we're right sometimes, and occasionally we even are." She thought probably this Mr. Stark had thought he was right as well. And what he should have done was tell Peter everything, all the details and let him decide then which side was right. "But what makes people dangerous is when they refuse to see the other side or even consider that they might be wrong. That's when wars start and no one ever really wins a war."

She had learned that from the Doctor.

Peter doesn't say anything for almost a minute, carefully considering what Professor River has told him. He probably could have stayed quiet a little bit longer and thought about it a bit longer, but he realized (perhaps a little too late) how long he had gone without saying something.

"Yeah," he says, finally, nodding. There's a brief pause, and then Peter continues:

"It's always bothered me, even when I was a kid, that adults don't really want to tell you everything because they don't think you're going to understand or you're not going to be able to handle it or something." Peter's not really sure of their motives, but he thinks he's probably right. But maybe he's wrong.

"And I guess," he kind of waves a hand out, gesturing vaguely. "It's like that in the history textbooks we read in school that paint certain leaders, certain countries in a more positive light than others. That make heroes and villains out of people who really shouldn't be."

And sometimes, Peter wonders about that. About whether or not his heroes were really heroes, and about whether his villains are really as bad as they're supposed to be.

Peter rubs the side of his nose and chuckles lightly. "Sorry," he says, apologetically. "I know this was supposed to be a history lesson, but I think I'm just starting to ramble."

Technically he was still a kid, but she understood what he was saying.

"Don't apologize for thinking. So few people actually do." A smile flickered on her face and she pushed her hair back. "And history is just the study of things that happened. That could be yesterday or a hundred years ago."

She idly tapped the blue diary on the desk as though the movement was familiar, comforting almost.

"They say if you know what happened you can stop it from happening again. When I was your age I thought all of World War II could have been stopped if I could just go back in time and kill Hitler." And she actually could have, and tried once. Sort of.

"I didn't know that the Japanese and Chinese had been at war for years in Manchuria. Killing Hitler wouldn't have stopped that. What I didn't know then was that you can't stop things from happening. Not the big things like wars. You can just do your best to understand why and what side you want to be on."

That makes sense. It really does. And it should be enough for Peter, but somehow it isn't.

"Right now, I'm just -- I'm just a Neighborhood Friendly Spider-Man. I'm still trying to figure everything out with my powers, because I know that if I don't practice, I'm just gonna cause problems for everyone else."

He swallows, thinking of the fight against half of the Avengers; he'd gotten beaten down to the point where he couldn't do anything except lay sprawled out on the tarmac. And yeah, the other half of the Avengers left him alone after that happened, but that was because at heart, even if they really were wrong like Mr. Stark said, they were still good people. And he's sure that Mr. Stark and the others knew that too.

Peter couldn't always count on the people he fought to be good people. If he got laid out like that in any other combat, he'd probably be dead. And if he wasn't dead, whatever enemy he was combating would probably use him against his allies -- like a hostage.

And Peter didn't want that. If he were dead, he couldn't be of use to anyone. And he didn't want to be used against his allies, either.

"But eventually, I got to think about what I want to do with my powers. After I graduate from high school." A beat. "Or college. And I think about these kind of things a lot, because when you can do the things that I can, but you don't, when bad things happen, they happen because of you."

That's something Peter knows from experience.

"And," he says, taking a breath. "I don't know what bad things I should be stopping, because there's so many bad things happening to so many people every day."

You couldn't even always count on your history teacher to be good people. River certainly wasn't, or hadn't been.

"Bad thing happen regardless of what good men do or don't do every day, you can't take responsibility for all the bad things, just because you might be able to stop them."

She considered how to tell the story she thought he might need to hear, but struggled since it wasn't a story she told.

"I was taken from my parents when I was very young, because some people wanted the perfect weapon against one particular man. He was like you, special, wanting to right the wrongs in the universe. But he learned eventually that you can't save everyone, not even from themselves. And that isn't your fault even if it feels like it is."

It was weird. Hearing this somehow made Peter feel good and bad at the same time. Good, because there were other people out there struggling with this, too; he wasn't alone. But it was also bad, because there were people out there struggling with this, too, and he wouldn't want anyone else to worry about stuff like this the way that he did.

"Were you that weapon?" Peter asks quietly, unsure if he should be prying. "And -- how did the man figure this out for himself? I mean, I'm not sure I'd be able to without anyone helping me."

"I was. I killed him. Twice technically. But he is remarkably difficult to kill so I married him." And she missed him more than she thought possible after their time on Darillium.

"He's lived longer than most of us can dream of living, my murderous history not withstanding, and it took many years, and many battles for him to figure it out. And even then, sometimes there's someone who he just can't let die, for whatever reason." Because he might understand that he couldn't save everyone, but he still wanted to, deep down.

This is the weirdest "how we met" story that Peter's ever heard in his entire life. In reality and in fiction -- which is really saying something, because he and Ned were always watching movies together.

He doesn't ask if she misses him, because Peter can't imagine not missing his wife (if he had one), and there's so many people he misses right now that he's not married to. So instead, he asks another question:

"How do you deal with him not being here?"

"I suppose I'm used to it now." She admitted, and yes she knows its a weird story. "Most of my life, I've spent without him. Even as his wife, I didn't travel with him, not always, and not for long periods of time. He'd pop in and out of my life, and sometimes I'd pop in and out of his."

For some of it she'd been in prison for killing him, which was even odder than how they'd met.

"I miss him, but until just before I came here I wasn't used to having him there every day. Not even most days. I have his picture and I have my memories." Her hand flattened on the diary and when she smiled it went all the way to her eyes so he would know she wasn't lying.

"Most of the time it's enough. And on those rare occasions when it isn't, I usually do something outrageous to take my mind off the missing."

Peter's not really used to not having Aunt May and Ned in his life. Aunt May in particular. She had taken care of him ever since his parents died when he was little.

Peter runs a hand along the back of her neck. "Like, what kind of outrageous things?" he asks.

"Probably nothing I should encourage you to do if you're missing home." That got a laugh, but it was clear she understood. "I studied archeology so sometimes I go on expeditions, I was headed to the biggest library in the universe when I ended up here."

Peter chuckles lightly in response. "Yeah, that obvious, huh?"

It's kind of embarrassing to admit, but it seems that it's something that everyone can relate to, here. And somehow, after this conversation, it feels like something he can talk to Professor River about.

"This is the longest I've ever been away from home," Peter admits. "I'd never even been on a plane until last year. The furthest I've really been away from New York before I went to Germany was Jersey."

This was way farther, though.

"And... well, I miss my Aunt May. A lot. And my best friend Ned, too. And not just because I could talk to them about anything."

Because he could. Even Aunt May knew basically everything about him now that she new about him being Spider-Man.

"I also worry about Aunt May, too. Because my parents are gone, and so is Uncle Ben, so I'm basically all she has left. Or... all she had left."

"Not obviously but maybe just so common I assumed. And it's normal to worry about the people at home," his Aunt May sounded like a survivor, to lose her husband, and take in Peter after he'd lost his parents. Someone who carried on.

"Your Aunt May sounds like a strong woman. She probably misses you like you miss her, but you're not all alone and she isn't either. Your friend Ned probably doesn't let that happen. Or Mr. Stark." If time even moved at home the same way it did here. She isn't so sure about that.

That comforts Peter a little.

"Yeah, she's tough. And I'm sure Ned's looking out for her, just like you said." And he hopes Mr. Stark's looking out for her too, but he really can't be sure. He was pretty busy. Maybe sometimes, though.

"It's weird, though. I think sometimes about what would happen if I did actually get back there," he says. "And I think I'd miss everyone here, too. Especially Liz. Even if somehow we were from the same Earth and both ended up going home, she'd be much older than me if we ever met up again."

"Remind me some day to tell you about the age difference between my husband and I." It was easily in the triple digits. But really once you turned 200, who cared any more. Or maybe in his case once he turned 21 or something.

"But I understand that too," she hadn't really gotten close enough to anyone here to miss them except maybe Kitty. And it was startling to realize that she probably would miss her friend.

But then the only real friends she'd had in her life had been her parents.

"It's hard. Wanting to go home, but also trying to make a home."

Peter gives her a curious look at the mention of the age difference between her and her husband. Was she like, married to a super old man? Peter supposes once you reach a certain age it's probably not that big of a deal.

"Yeah," Peter says. "It is. Um. So, history. We should probably decide what we're going to start with." He glances at the blue book before returning his gaze back to the professor's face. "Did you have something in mind?"

He really was SUPER old. She considered that for a moment, thinking about what he'd said about choices, and good guys and bad guys and missing home.

"How about we look at how civilizations rise and how do they change, or fall as the case may be? We can start with various early agrarian and hunter gatherer societies and work forward in time until we think we can define what it means to be civilized."

She has all sorts of things to say about what civilized might mean, and it would force Peter to think about how middle class white America viewed other cultures.

"Sounds interesting," Peter says, and it does. He can't ever remember taking a history course that went that far back. "Is there -- is there going to be like, a lecture, reading material, quizzes, tests?" Peter wasn't exactly sure how this was going to work, given this wasn't exactly your traditional kind of classroom.

"Does that sound like fun?" It didn't to her, but then if that was what he wanted she could oblige.

"There's not too much by way of texts but I can come up with some reading from what we do have... though most of it will probably have to be lectures of projects. And I suppose if you insist on a test..." She shuddered in mock horror.

"No," Peter says, waving his hands in front of him, as if to dispel the very thought from her mind. "No tests is fine." Though he did well on tests, they also made him nervous. The less tests in his life, the better. Projects were less anxiety-inducing -- so long as they didn't include some sort of oral presentation.

"And yeah," Peter says. "It does sound like fun."

Peter swallows and then looks over at Professor River.

"Professor," he starts, uncertainly. "I just --" He presses his lips together. "I just thought I should thank you for listening to me today. I really didn't expect to come in here and talk about, about my aunt and all, especially with someone I just met, but it just kinda came out."

"You're welcome, but you really don't need to thank me. Good teachers are the ones who are there to listen." At least that was always what she'd thought. Of course they rarely did which was why she'd spent so much time in detention.

"And people are always confiding in me, it's the hair, it looks like it can hold all sorts of secrets."

"Yeah," Peter agrees, smiling. "They are." He's pretty sure at least one or two of the teachers back at Middletown would have been willing to listen, too. It would have just been weird to talk to them about anything.

Peter looks over at Professor River. It wasn't weird talking to the teachers he had here. And he was pretty thankful for that.

[ooc: Wrap up here? I can't wait to do another scene with these two. Peter really, really likes her.]

[For River Song] In Need of Tudoring

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