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River scribbles on the napkin, tries to make her desperate, last-ditch attempts at remembering this him look absent-minded and unnoticeable as they talk. She makes sketches of his hand curled lazily around the empty wine glass, of strong eyebrows and piercing, beautiful blue eyes and the little crow's feet around them. The slope of his neck where it meets his jaw, the smile lines around his mouth. His lips.
He catches her staring then and quirks a brow. She flushes and looks away, feels ridiculous for it and tries to remember what they were talking about.
“River-”
But the waiter appears and whatever he was going to say is lost to ordering dessert, something chocolate for them to share. She wants to ask but he drums his fingers, laden with rings this time, against the table and all she can think is that he’s bored, that his last self wouldn’t have lasted halfway through dinner let alone to dessert.
She shakes herself and tucks away the napkins and pen when he isn’t looking. Unclenches her jaw and loosens her shoulders, tries to tune into not just the sound of his voice but the words he’s saying too.
Dessert arrives and they pick up their spoons. He tells her about bank heists and a good Dalek, of all things and her smile comes easy then. He’s witty with his Scottish tongue, unafraid to use all the words his previous self would’ve wagged a finger in her face for. She tries, a bit desperately, to banish any thoughts of that low voice in other settings, where there is no restaurant or lights, no interrupting -sort of her ex- waiter. But it feels dirty, feels wrong and she doesn’t dare think what he’d say if he knew, if he’d be disgusted, repulsed.
Dessert is over before she knows it, a blessing and not, not at all. It feels a bit like her life is slipping through her fingers, like silk only it burns. On the walk back to the Tardis he keeps his hands in his pockets and she’s glad for it. That he’s removed the temptation, the habit to reach for his hand.
The Towers loom in the distance, casting a flickering shadow across the dusty red and gold planes of Darillium. They sing unhurried, a harmony that floats through the air and so close to the monoliths it makes the ground beneath their feet hum.
She stops short when he opens the Tardis door. She curls her hands into fists to keep from reaching out to touch the blue wood. She can’t go in the box, not when it holds so many memories and her hard-won control is fraying at the edges. At the edges of her mind she hears her mothers song, a gentle calling, like the moon pulling the sea.
“I’ll see you ‘round sweetie,” she finds it in herself to smile like it’s nothing.
“Sorry?”
She swallows and just wants this over with, “I’m off to Luna- classes to teach, expeditions to be had-”
“But you said okay.”
She blinks, goes over the walk, dinner, the balcony, in her head to try and find where she agreed to something else.
“I don’t know what-”
“You said okay to Darillium,” he says slowly as if it’s obvious.
River nods, “yes and was that not it?”
“What- River I said -I meant what I said.”
“Meant what? Sweetie, I don’t-”
“The night, our night, the one that lasts twenty-four years,” he says twenty-four in that same tender way he had before and it makes something in her twist around itself.
“I know that,” she manages, “but what’s it got to do with-”
“One last adventure, if you want it.”
“Didn’t we just-”
“Are you being dense on purpose?” And that tone is new, sharper, but it makes her feel better, his ire and impatience far more familiar than whatever sort of tenderness had come before it.
“Excuse me,” she crosses her arms, digs her nails into skin.
“Dinner River, isn’t an adventure,” he runs a hand through his hair and looks at her funny, with soft eyes, “we’ve got twenty-four years yet,” he says.
Her hearts seem to tangle with each other, like barbed vines knotting in her chest and no one ever warns you just how similar a feeling hope is to dying. Or maybe it isn’t, River has died and gladly would again over feeling like this.
“That’s not funny,” she rasps, clears her throat and wishes desperately for her eyes to clear.
“I’m not joking,” he looks confused, maybe angry. But she feels angry too and if she’s not angry then she’s hoping and right now she can’t imagine a worse feeling. All she can hear is you can’t expect a monolith to love you back and his reply, no you can’t.
“Is it because I said you couldn’t understand little time? Because I was just upset it wasn’t a challenge Doctor I didn’t-”
“You’re angry,” he sounds perplexed, watching her with a furrowed brow and she doesn’t like it. How he seems to look right into her, as if her skin was made of glass, and see everything. It’s unfair when he wears a new face she hasn’t learnt to read yet.
“For a genius, you’re remarkably thick sometimes,” she growls but it comes out half-hearted, too much like a wounded animal.
“I don’t- River for once will you just say what you mean?”
“Says you,” and it’s deliberately antagonistic, she knows, but wants his ire back because at least that she knows how to deal with. That way maybe she could trick him into revealing what he wants and figure out how to give it to him. Usually she knows better than to try word games with the king of them himself but anything is better than admitting that she doesn’t always know.
“River I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about -a challenge? I got you a bloody house-”
“A house?”
“Yeah you know those buildings people live in with a kitchen, bedrooms, bathrooms-”
“Alright,” she holds up a hand, fighting a watery smile.
He throws the key at her and she catches it in her fist. Stares down at it until her vision swims. She doesn’t know what it means, or at least, all she knows is what she wants it to mean.
“Doctor…”
He takes a step closer, “talk to me,” he says in that soft, gruff voice. She wishes he wouldn’t because it’s I got you a house, not us, never us. She tightens her hand around the key, forces herself to lift her chin and find his eyes. Forces herself to be brave.
“In what universe do you expect me to believe that you’re going to spend consecutive years, let alone twenty, in a house?”
“In any universe where I’m with you,” he steps forward again and his hand comes up to tuck an errant curl behind her ear. She thinks back, tries to remember when -if he’s ever said something so sentimental, so sweet, so human to her. The Doctor doesn’t do human and neither does she, probably even less so than him. She’s spent every moment with him trying to hide just how human she is.
“You don’t believe me do you?” He asks.
She can’t look at him and wonders suddenly if her vortex manipulator would take her away before he could stop her.
“That’s awfully human of you,” her voice comes out scratchy, barely there, “to buy a house.”
He almost laughs, “well yes it was a whole thing, I had to get a mortgage River, we have a mortgage,” he says a bit like he can’t quite believe it and neither can she. But this time it’s we, not you and suddenly she thinks she might be being a bit of an idiot. “We don’t have to live in it if you don’t want to,” he’s rambling, “we can stay in the Tardis or elsewhere, anything you want-”
“Doctor.”
He takes her face in his hands, tilts her eyes up to meet his, “I want this.”
“Me too,” she manages, pulling away to wipe tears from her cheeks.
“Hey now,” he takes her hands in his, “no more of that hiding the damage rubbish.”
Watch me, she thinks but can’t say, because it’s not what she wants, and selling that would be too big a lie even for her. There are no more spoilers left for her but she’s no fool, has read the rumours and the stories others write about them. Stories about their last night, stories about why it’s their last. But the towers, they’ve stood there for thousands of years he’d said and she’d said happily ever after doesn’t mean forever, just time, little time. And twenty-four doesn’t seem all that little, not with a time machine. In fact, it seems a bit like hope and this time it’s never been further from what dying feels like.