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Despite the many interruptions, he hopes he has actually managed to salvage the first night of their honeymoon. The unwelcome reminder – in the form of their future selves – of how finite their time together is has only made him more desperate to make this evening perfect. River deserves that and more.
She’d changed despite his insistence she never needed to, exchanging her prison uniform for something flouncy and flirtatious that makes his fingertips itch. She’s close enough to touch but he doesn’t, twirling his top hat between his hands and watching out of the corner of his eye as she helps herself to some more chips. The stars are set to appear any moment now and her gaze is pinned to the sky, waiting for the impressive show he’d promised her.
It’s a marked change from the woman who had been so determined to seduce him in the TARDIS and he fidgets anxiously, secretly wanting a bit of that back but unsure how to get them there. River has always been the instigator and he’s at a loss now that she’s so terribly young and it’s his turn to lead. He grips his hat in one hand and lifts the other to straighten his bowtie, inching a bit closer where they’ve settled on a massive tree branch.
Clearly still as alert to his every move as she’d been as Mels, River glances at him out of the corner of her eye the moment he so much as twitches in her direction. When she notices him hovering, she places a protective hand over her chips and says, “I told you to get your own, sweetie.”
He frowns. “First of all, River Song,” he says, wagging a finger at her and refusing to soften at the way her eyes light up when he uses her name. “I wasn’t trying to steal your chips. And second of all, are you telling me you wouldn’t share? On our honeymoon?”
She whirls to stare at him, blonde curls bouncing around her shoulders and her eyes wide. “Honeymoon?” She laughs once, strained and nervous. “We’re not married.”
He squints at her, fearing for a moment he’d picked up the wrong River. But no, he’d gotten her on her first night in prison – she’d said so herself. So she must have already done Area 52. “Of course we’re married.” He waves a hand, gesturing between them. “There was a bowtie and a kiss-”
River interrupts him in the middle of his kissy-face impression, still eyeing him incredulously. “Yes, where you were a robot. In a timeline that no longer exists. I’ll hardly hold you to it, Doctor.” She smiles when he merely stares at her, the expression somehow unbearably sad despite the softness in her eyes. “You think I didn’t notice in all my research of you how often you get married and swan off, never to see your poor lovestruck bride again?”
“I haven’t swanned off,” he points out, wounded despite the truth of her words. River is different. Surely she knows that. “I’m here now, aren’t I?”
“Of course you are.” She reaches out a hand, patting his bowtie fondly. “I’m the child of your best friends.”
He stares at her. “You think I married you out of guilt?”
“There are worse reasons to get married.” With a shrug, she turns back to the night sky spread out before them and her hand drops from his bowtie to reach for another chip. “But it wasn’t a real marriage, remember? You’re off the hook.”
“River,” he sighs, tugging at his hair. Why is she making him do this? Doesn’t she know he’s rubbish at this? “I don’t want to be off the hook. I want-” Blimey, what does he want? Twelve hundred years old and he still has no idea. He just knows that whatever this is – sitting here, bickering and pretending he doesn’t want any of her chips – he wants every last terrifying moment of it. With her. “I want -”
The sky lights up over their heads, brilliantly illuminated with the glow of a billion stars. It brightens their surroundings like sunlight. Ordinarily, this natural phenomenon wouldn’t be enough to distract him from the issue at hand but River tips up her face to stare at it like she’s never seen anything so wondrous. Her eyes widen and the most beautiful smile bursts to life on her face. It’s a thousand times more distracting than any star has ever been. The Doctor finds himself caught, gazing at her like a new Time Lord staring at his first planet.
Without looking away from the view above, River nudges the plate of chips toward him. A peace offering. The Doctor grins and ignores them, leaning in to press a smacking kiss to her cheek. She swats him, turning her head to seek out a proper snog. He sinks into her with a sigh, fingers finding her wild curls, and doesn’t stop to wonder why he feels like he’s forgotten to say something important.
-
He knows what he feels. He has known what he feels for far longer than he’d ever admit to any version himself. He hasn’t said the words since he was a young man on Gallifrey, unburdened by loss and the weight of ages. He might have said them once or twice to Susan when she was a child. The point is, it has been so long that the words don’t even feel tangible anymore – nothing but brittle bones and dust taking up space at the base of his throat. He worries if he tries to say them now, nothing will escape but ash.
He isn’t stupid enough to do nothing and merely hope River understands through osmosis but those words aren’t enough. They’re imaginary and ephemeral, easily lost and forgotten in this wide, unknowable universe. So many days he and River will spend apart, separated by space and time – yearning across worlds. He wants River to remember, even when she forgets everything else. He wants River to have more than brittle words.
So he gives her memories. Big, flashy, unforgettable memories that could cast a giant neon sign across the universe in 50 foot capital letters. You. Are. Loved. Stevie Wonder sings it for her under London Bridge; mysteriously inspired poets pen her sonnets; da Vinci sketches her likeness in La Scapigliata. Sunflowers remind him of her and he scatters seeds all over the fields of Spain so every summer people flock there to admire her beauty; he goes back in time and leaves notes throughout history for her to find during her excavations; he takes lessons with Julia Child and Fernand Point so he can make all her favorite dishes. He makes love to her at the start of the universe and the end of it so their love is a bookend to the beginning and the end of everything.
He never asks her if she understands what he isn’t saying. Instead he smiles when she finds another of his surprises and drinks in her laugh when he spins her around another ballroom, hoping she sees it for what it is. Not a showy distraction from a magician, but the last precious coin from a penniless man. All he has to offer. Someday, he might dust off those meagre words humans so love to abuse and see if he can make them shine again – make them pretty enough to deserve her – but for now, surely all this is enough? It must be.
-
Despite her hesitance around them, children gravitate naturally towards River. He thinks it must be the hair. There is no other possible explanation for why they’re all gathered around her when he’s the one sitting by the bonfire introducing these people to the roasted marshmallow about ten thousand years too early. Considering himself a bit of an expert on the subject, he appoints himself the overseer of their technique, teaching the locals how to get the outside nice and crisp without making the insides a gooey mess.
Most of them are understandably fascinated but every time the Doctor looks up in search of his wife, he finds her sitting just to the left of all the excitement and surrounded by a group of tiny humans. A few of them sit at her feet, two sit on either side of her, one stands behind her poking curiously at her hair, and another seems to have made himself a nice comfy home on her lap. To her credit, River isn’t as horrified by all the attention as she used to be when she was younger.
She seems to be telling them all a story, judging by the enraptured looks on their faces and the way River keeps leaning in close like she always does when imparting a secret. Unable to conceal his grin, the Doctor puts the nearest villager in charge of marshmallow roasting and slips away to investigate. As he gets closer, the soft murmur of River’s voice becomes clearer until he can make out exactly which story she’s regaling her audience with.
“And of course, because he’s a man he thinks he always knows exactly where he’s going but he never does. None of them do.” She offers them all an exasperated look, as though inviting them to commiserate with her on the hopelessness of men. Every single little girl in the group nods sagely. “Now, who do you think actually found the gemstone and restored the High Chancellor to his natural form?”
One of them ventures confidently, “You did!”
River beams. “And don’t you forget it.”
Shaking his head and biting back a smile, the Doctor folds his arms over his chest and attempts to look cross. “Just so we’re clear, I did know exactly where I was going, River Song. I was… testing you.”
She glances up, apparently unsurprised to find him eavesdropping. “And the part where you twisted your ankle in the mines and I had to carry you for five miles back to the TARDIS?” She smiles innocently. “Was that part of the test too?”
“Yes. No.” He scowls, dropping his arms to his sides. “Shut up. Dear.”
River grins and he leans in, bopping her fondly on the nose. She turns her head coyly away when he tries to kiss her, teasing, “Not in front of the children, honey.”
“Ah. Right.” He turns to their rapt audience, pasting on a nervous grin. “Oi you lot, you’re missing out on all the sweets.” He claps his hands together, watching them scramble to their feet. “Off you pop, before your parents eat them all.”
Only the little one on River’s lap refuses to budge, curled up there like he belongs. The Doctor sighs, giving up on stealing a kiss for the moment as he settles onto the log beside his wife. Elbows on his knees, he peeks at her through his fringe and confesses, “I wasn’t actually testing you.”
River spares him an exasperated glance, preoccupied with the toddler currently clinging to the front of her shirt. “I know, sweetie.”
“And the whole carrying me thing was a tiny bit…” He risks a glance at their audience and whispers, “Sexy.”
She rolls her eyes. “I know, sweetie.”
“Right. Good.”
He thinks about offering to fetch her a marshmallow but the sight of her hesitantly dropping a hand to stroke the little tot’s hair from his forehead stops the Doctor in his tracks. Despite her reticence, she’s a natural with kids. She always knows what to do, even when she doesn’t seem to trust her own instincts. He’s sure her hesitance must come from her own unusual upbringing and the complete lack of parental figures who didn’t have an eyepatch and a villainous agenda but he finds himself wishing she would give herself more credit. She knows what kids need – even if only because they need the things no one ever gave her.
Elbowing her gently, he says, “You’re good with them.”
River scoffs, glancing away. “I’m really not.”
“Could have fooled me.” He shrugs, studying the boy with sleepy eyes still clinging to her. “He seems very fond of you.”
River glances down at the boy, biting her lip. “I probably just look like someone he knows.”
“Someone else with this hair?” He plucks at a curl fondly. “Impossible.”
River swats at him, adorably and uncharacteristically flushed. The Doctor chooses not to mention it, watching in silence the way she cradles the boy to her and bounces him a bit in her arms to nudge him gently to sleep. Not for the first time, he thinks she’d probably make a brilliant mother if she wanted to be. He wonders briefly if she does want it. Maybe she does and just hasn’t said anything. What if he brought it up? Would she want it, if he offered?
Could he offer?
No. Of course not. It’s a terrible idea. The universe would come after any child of the Doctor and River Song. It would hardly be fair to ask a tiny little being to carry the weight and hatred of an entire universe. Besides, their lives are hardly the right environment in which to raise a child – what with the running and the prison and the timey-wimey-ness of it all.
But… if River really wanted it he might consider it in spite of all that. He might even sort of fancy the idea. He can’t ever see himself sitting still long enough to have a proper family life but the image of a miniature version of him and River asking for bedtime stories and refusing to eat their vegetables and begging for another trip to the intergalactic zoo? With anyone else, the very notion would send him running far and fast but with River it’s… Well. He’s grown to like all sorts of things so long as River is involved.
“Matteo?”
The Doctor lifts his head, snapping back to the present just in time to watch a woman – the boy’s mother, probably – lift the sleeping tot out of River’s arms with a murmur of thanks. River nods stiffly, watching the woman cradle her baby and sway with him toward the warmth of the bonfire. The ache of her longing is clear in her eyes.
The Doctor swallows, wanting nothing but for that look to disappear. Wanting her to have everything it’s within his power to give her. “You know, we could-”
“Doctor? We’re out of marshmallows!”
He sighs. “I warned them about rationing.”
River turns to him with a smirk, oblivious to what he’d been about to offer. “I’ll fetch some more from the TARDIS.”
“Thanks, dear.” He finally steals that kiss he’d been after, smiling as she slips away. The courage to ask her what had been on his mind goes with her. He never finds the nerve to bring it up again.
-
After they lose her parents, River spends most of her time in her study writing the book that will start it all. He knows he isn’t strong enough to be of any assistance to her, far more apt to make suggestions like taking the manuscript and pitching it into a black hole, but he also knows River would likely rebuff any offers of help from him right now anyway. She’s avoiding him.
The Doctor can’t blame her. He’s hardly been desirable company in recent days. All these centuries knocking about the universe and he’s still that same selfish old man he’s always been, mourning his Ponds as though he’s the only one who has lost something. River deserves far better than a selfish mad man like him but apparently she isn’t going anywhere despite his many faults and foibles. It’s this strange, terrible combination of guilt and gratitude, contrition and devotion that finds himself standing outside the door to her study holding a cup of tea and listening to the soft click of typewriter keys coming from within the room.
“River?”
Balancing the cup in the palm of one hand, he raps his knuckles softly against the door. The typing doesn’t even pause. He sighs, nudging the door open with his hip and peering inside. The hinges creak but River doesn’t glance up, typing away as though he hasn’t interrupted. Reluctant to intrude on her space without permission after all the things he has said and done recently, the Doctor hovers in the doorway and wraps his fingers around the warm ceramic of the mug he’d brought her.
“I made tea.”
Again, she doesn’t look up from her notes. Pencil between her teeth, she taps her fingers against the keys of her typewriter and says, “Thanks.”
Figuring this may well be the closest he’ll get to permission to approach, the Doctor shoves off the doorframe and picks his way across the floor – careful not to step on the crumpled wads of paper scattered everywhere that River must have tossed in various fits of pique. He settles the mug on the corner of her desk, within reach if she wants it but not so close she’ll accidentally knock it over with an elbow. His job done, he lingers beside her desk uncertainly. She hasn’t asked him to leave but she’s hardly rolled out the welcome mat either.
Squirming, the Doctor touches a fingertip to a stack of field journals and ventures hesitantly, “How’s it going?”
“Fine,” comes the short, clipped reply. “I’ll be done soon and then I’ll go.”
He lifts his head from scrutinizing the contents of her desk, frowning. “Go?”
“Hmm.”
River lifts her glasses from the top of her head, relocating them to the bridge of her nose. Usually the sight of her in them does funny things to his insides but today, he only feels a cold knot of dread beginning to tighten in the pit of his stomach. Why hadn’t he noticed how tired she looks? She isn’t dressed to impress anyone today, wearing a pair of leggings and one of Rory’s old jumpers. He thinks the fuzzy socks on her feet might have belonged to Amy once. Her wild curls are piled on top of her head but keep spilling over her forehead every time she bends to peer at her notes. There are new lines of weariness around her eyes and mouth, a dullness to her gaze he has never seen before. And she still hasn’t looked at him.
The Doctor swallows, inching closer. “Actually I wanted to ask if you were hungry. I could cook…” He brightens. “Or we could have dinner somewhere. Anywhere you like, Professor Song.”
She shakes her head. “I need to get this done.”
He scoffs. “There’s plenty of time to finish it-”
“Not if you want me out of your hair sooner rather than later.” She sighs when he goes still, staring at her in silence. Her eyes remain locked on her half-finished manuscript. “It has to be done now.”
Studying her clenched jaw and the tightly contained way she holds herself – so very still, as though the slightest wrong move might make something explode in her face – the Doctor begins to understand he might have buggered things up quite a bit more than he’d realized. “What makes you think I want you out of my hair?”
Despite her every attempt to appear unaffected, the words slip out with an incredulous huff of laughter. “You mean besides your every word and action in the last week?”
He flinches. “River, no. I didn’t mean-”
She sighs, the bitterness slipping away like it had never been. At times it alarms him how easily she forgives his transgressions. Taking off her glasses and letting them clatter to her desk, River pinches the bridge of her nose and closes her eyes for a moment. Gathering patience, though she probably thinks he doesn’t know what she’s doing. As if he doesn’t know all of her little tells by now, even the ones he pretends he doesn’t see.
“I know you didn’t,” she says, and the sound of her voice is more familiar to him now. Soft. Warm. Forgiving. He really doesn’t deserve her. She lifts her head and finally meets his worried gaze since the first time he walked into her study. The utter lack of light in her eyes scares the hell out of him. “But it’s clear you need space. So I’ll finish the manuscript and I’ll go.”
“Stay,” he insists, bracing himself with his hands against the edge of her desk. He leans in toward her, forcing a smile. “We’ll pay Vastra and Jenny a visit. Or we’ll go to Egypt and see how the pyramids are coming along, eh? Get married again while we’re there – how’s that?”
“Doctor,” she begins, and he hates it when she says his name like that. It sounds like no. “I’m not going to stay just because you don’t want to be alone.”
He pushes off her desk with a low growl. “That’s not what this is.”
“Isn’t it?” The resignation in her patient voice is maddening. “It’s alright, honey. We’ll go our separate ways for a while and I’ll pop round to see how you’re faring after I get back.”
“Back?” Pacing to her bookshelves across the room and preparing to pout a bit and possibly make childish comments about the amount of archeology texts she owns, the Doctor scowls and prods irritably at a scroll wedged between suspiciously authentic looking manuscripts of Macbeth and The Importance of Being Earnest – stolen, no doubt. “Back from where?”
Already sliding her glasses back on and returning her attention to her notes, River mutters absently, “I got an invitation to lead the first expedition to the Library planet. Thought I might go – get my mind off things.”
The Doctor goes cold. That slowly growing and widening knot of dread in the pit of his stomach yawns open like a black hole. He grips the edge of a bookshelf until his knuckles turn white and the wood begins to creak beneath his fingers, threatening to splinter. With his back turned to her, River doesn’t see the way the blood drains away from his face. The way his mouth can only silently form no over and over again until it doesn’t even feel like a real word anymore. It screams in his head anyway, blaring like a siren until it loses some of its power with repetition and he feels just as helpless as he had the day he watched her die.
No.
Not yet.
He just watched an ending unfold right before his eyes. He cannot – will not – do it again. He will not lose another precious person to this goddamned thief called Time. The pain of losing the Ponds is still raw and fresh in his mind, reminders of them at every turn and memories lurking like ghosts out of the corner of his eye. He has lost companions before. It always feels like this; like being ripped open and left to bleed out. It heals eventually, despite all his best intentions to cling to his grief. Another scar to bear in his long, lonely life.
But this, he knows, would break him.
“Don’t pout, sweetie,” she says, mistaking his silence for something else. Still typing away like she hasn’t destroyed his whole world. “Far better we have some time to ourselves than stay together and say more things we don’t mean.”
He won’t lose her. The only solution is to change it. The Doctor lifts his head, resolve slipping down his spine like cold steel. Not one line echoes in his head but he pushes it away with a grim smile. “I meant them.”
The typing stops. “What?”
“What I said when we lost Amy.” He doesn’t turn to look at her yet, struggling to school his features into something expressionless and cold – the mighty Time Lord instead of the devastated husband. It’s easier when he can’t see the look on her face. “If you hadn’t told her to go -”
River’s voice grows brittle. “She’d be here and miserable without my father.”
“She’d be here.” Clenching his jaw, the Doctor forces himself to turn from the bookshelf and face her properly. River sits utterly still at her desk, staring at him like he’s a particularly bad dream she’s waiting to wake up from. “And that’s really what it comes down to in the end, wife. If not for you, my Amelia would still be here.”
In the silence of the room, he can hear the hitch in River’s breath.
He directs his gaze elsewhere before he can see her eyes begin to water, glaring at a spot in the carpet instead. His hands tremble and he clenches them into fists, forcing the words out around the lump in his throat. “How can you expect me to look at you, knowing you’re the reason we lost them both? If you’d been quicker or cleverer or just… more. I expected better of you.” He stops when he sees her flinch out of the corner of his eye, unable to bear hurting her for another second with such poisonous lies. His eyes begin to burn and he snaps out, “I can’t wait for you to finish the manuscript. Go now. And take your bloody book with you.”
He stalks from the room before she can say a word and he doesn’t dare look at her as he leaves, knowing the moment he sees her face he’ll drop to his knees and beg forgiveness. So he walks and he walks until his vision blurs and the TARDIS opens a door, letting him stumble into a room at the end of the corridor.
Their bedroom. Of course.
With a growl, the Doctor picks up the nearest thing to hand – one of River’s high heels – and hurls it at the wall. It cracks the plaster and he stares at the split along the wall, his chest heaving and his eyes burning. In the ensuing quiet, there is only the rasp of his shaky breathing and the sound of River’s footsteps as she leaves.
-
It’s only standing in his tomb with her ghost in front of him that he understands he had certainly changed things that day in the TARDIS – just not how he’d hoped. River still went to the Library; she still died in his place and wound up trapped in the data core. The only thing he had changed was letting her die believing he blamed her. Believing he didn’t love her.
Cradling her face in his hands, he looks into her eyes and realizes this may very well be his last chance to tell her all the things he’d never been able to tell her before. So many of those things seem pointless now. What does it matter that he’d always considered Area 52 their wedding day or that he would have given her children if she’d only asked? What does it matter if he never once blamed her for what happened to her parents or that he loves her so much he chokes on the words every time he tries to say them? It’s too late for any of it now.
She’s gone and he’s looking at an echo.
River doesn’t ask him to say any of those things anyway. She wants something far more difficult to give. A goodbye.
“Say it like you’re going to come back.”
And it’s this – the thing he wants desperately to refuse to ever say – that he doesn’t have the hearts to deny her. Mouth full of lost opportunities and a lifetime of regret, the Doctor swallows it all back with a bitter smile. “See around, Professor River Song.”