Archive of Our Own ^beta

"You and me. Time and space. You watch us run."
- River Song, Forest of the Dead

She spends her evenings telling stories to her children, to Joshua, Ella and Charlotte. Some of these stories are true.

Once upon a time there was an archaeologist. She travelled through time and space, sorting out mysteries that made sense to no man or woman or being. Until she found him; until he found her. Until they found each other in a vast cosmos of things that are (never) meant to be.

She sends him love letters via psychic paper. Short little messages, mostly humorous, never revealing much of anything at all.

Remember to buy milk for your tea.

That shirt doesn't go with your trousers.

He makes fun of her for them when he picks her up for another wild adventure, but she knows how much he enjoys those instant messages across time and space.

This is how they communicate when they are apart.

Once upon a time a girl met a boy. She hated him until she loved him. She travelled to the ends of universes with him, for him, to find him.

He made her laugh. She made him cry. They ran together, like a force of nature.

They didn't live happily ever after, or: he lived and she remained, neither happily but both ever after.

Pick up Arimaldian chocolates if you go through the Andrean Nebula again.

A story she tells the children one night makes them upset. Well, the girls pout and the boy watches her with red-rimmed eyes and his mouth a thin line that reminds her with an ache of something she will never have.

The following night she tells them about the Doctor and how he saved the world and how he died, the first time around.

There are many things she wants to tell him from her cocoon of a timeless prison:

I hate you.

You are a selfish bastard.

You look great in that suit.

I'm sorry.

I hate you for not letting me have a choice.

I hate you for not telling me how you met me and for not telling me the last time we met would be our final time as us.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

But she figures he knows, or knew, or will know. Whenever/wherever he is.

She misses him, and she watches her children (not) grow up in a world with no future. An eternity of books and stories and arrested development. Heaven. Hell. Limbo.

She realizes the strangeness of this, he a Timelord not truly bound by any laws of time and she stuck in this place where she never ages. They are alike, finally, in that manner.

How she wishes it was not so.

I think we should get a dog. We could name him Hermes.

She has an affair (nobody but she herself would consider it an affair) with Doctor Moon. He reads books to her; they walk on a beach with blue sand that gets everywhere; they sit in silence; he holds her as she weeps. She never tells Doctor Moon about him.

Or Spot or Marco Polo. Anything, really.

She meets him for the first time on a Sunday, when nothing exciting is ever supposed to happen, but they end up running for their lives anyway. His hand reaches for hers mid-run and she just grabs it and holds for dear life.

He doesn't let go until over an hour later, like afraid she'd slip right between his fingers and run away.

She doesn't understand why until much, much later (much too late), in the library, when she is already counting down.

He's a whirlwind of excitement and you cannot help but be swept along.

"That's impossible," she tells him.

"Stick with me, and I'll show you just how untrue that is every time." His smile is devilish and inviting.

She grabs his hand, and they run.

I had the best dream about you last night. Kisses!

"That's fascinating," Doctor Moon says whenever she extolls on the virtues of the architecture of the villa. He smiles at her a little sadly. "Are there many things in the universe that will go undiscovered and unfound by man, because you are here and not there?"

She looks down at her empty hands. She does not have her diary with her, so she is uncertain. "Maybe a few. I don't know."

"Fear not, Professor." He offers his arm to her; it is time for their afternoon stroll. "Things that matter will always be found."

He doesn't let go of her hand.

River Song has no intention of falling in love, especially with this impossible man.

"I'm not actually a man, per se. I just look like one."

"And thank god for that," she replies, pulling him by the tie into another kiss.

"What happens next?” Ella wheedles. Joshua and Charlotte are already asleep.

"I can't tell you yet. Spoilers." She kisses her on the forehead. "I'll tell you another part of the story tomorrow."

The first time she meets him, he's covered in dirt, and she remembers, with a distinctly fond feeling of absolute terror that she thought he might get some mud on her diary even as they trample through the city, his hand clasping hers.

Later, his hands go everywhere, a cool, tropical storm in motion.

Later still, when he grabs the book from her hands – only a few pages are filled as it is quite new – he handles it with such gentle care, his eyes impossibly large and wild like a wolf out of a fairytale, she doesn't even mind that the little speckling of mud on one of the pages from their first run.

This peninsula has horrible weather.

She doesn't need to sleep, but she does, sometimes, if only to dream about things that do not exist in the library (this is what she calls the world, even if she knows this is barely true). She dreams about his touch on her body, about her hand still clasping his. About the adventures they've shared, and the unreal ones that only happen in her dreams and nightmares.

She dreams about his face, and his eyes, and every expression on his face she's ever seen.

She misses him beyond words and touches.

Sometimes she wakes up in terror because she can only hear one heartbeat instead of three.

Going to a dig. Did you steal my blue boots again?

He doesn't let go of her hand.

She wants to rewrite Shakespeare's sonnets in his name, and then burn those sonnets to the ground. Watch everything around her burn into cinder, be purified in the fire.

She finds Agatha Christie books, copies of copies of copies, and burns them instead. Doctor Moon finds new copies like magic, like nothing ever happened, when she regrets her actions two days later. Most things in this world are like that.

Doctor Moon offers her a piece of paper when the children are already asleep. They look like angels. She feels the familiar texture in her hands, slips it in her pocket for further study. It is just paper here, nothing else.

Clean up in the TARDIS, would you? My mother's visiting next week.

He is an impossible man and he does impossible things all the time.

Reason alone is no match for him.

He makes the impossible possible every single time.

This is her mantra, even as she consoles Ella over an argument with Charlotte, even when Miss Evangelista makes her almost laugh, even when everything almost feels normal and at peace.

Once upon a time, a man and a woman missed ever meeting one another. Time did not meet its match. A chance encounter never was.

In this world, Professor River Song lived to have children and grandchildren. There were institutes and buildings named after her but she never knew his name.

He lets go.

She holds the paper in her hands and stares at it for the longest time. The kids are getting ready for bed and want to hear a new story soon. The paper is as real as anything in this place, as real as the children, as she herself is.

She sends him one last message on psychic paper, wishing for the world, for everything. For anything.

I LOVE YOU.

She doesn't know if it goes through.

-the end

PS. It does.