Work Text:
stitching all of our little touches together
A few weeks after the worst day, I started writing lots of letters. I don't know why, but it was one of the only things that made my boots lighter.
For the Doctor, days can feel like mere moments. The measure of time, like the measure of anything else, only has meaning when it is compared to something else.
Most people compare their days to their lives, and he supposes that to a human life – so brief, so short – a day can feel like forever. But he has lived for centuries and millennia, and days fly by quicker than he can blink sometimes.
So he is almost shocked when the day comes to take his wife to hear the songs of ages, sung by timeless towers. He’d never meant to – never meant to finish that screwdriver. He’d never ever meant for them to stop. But she is younger and older and then younger, younger, younger. Those times when she’s older is like some sort of benediction for them both – they can breathe around each other and worry less about diaries or spoilers. But his diary is getting full – and when you own a book that’s bigger on the inside and it starts to feel full – well.
He knows that everybody dies.
He’s known that she would since the moment he’d met her. It’s funny, how something that happened ages and ages ago has never hurt more than it does now. Time heals all wounds. He laughs out loud at that – a lie so big he’s somehow shocked he isn’t even the source of that particular proverb.
He held her, he kissed her, he cried, he did everything she’d told him he would and more. Things she’d never mentioned, like how he’d held her hand, danced with her under spiralling crystal that resonated with his grief – the sound of two hearts shattering amplified and set to music. He’d kissed her until he thought even he would suffocate from it, and he’d made love to her, trying to imprint the shape of her waist, the curve of her spine, the flare of her hip, the feel of her skin where her neck met her shoulder – burn it all into his hearts, his brain, his soul.
Afterward, he’d been truly terrible. He’d been through loss before, but this was different. This wasn’t losing a girl who’d taught him to love again after a few brief years, this wasn’t the loss of his best friend after centuries of popping in and out of her life, with countless faces and leaving her with nothing but a desire to protect her world and a reliable android dog. This wasn’t watching someone forget him or die for him, or walk away. This wasn’t even losing a set of friends who’d given him more than he could ever properly express.
This was losing River. A woman who he’d loved for centuries of his life. He’d been just over nine hundred when he’d met her. And damn near seventeen hundred when he’d wished her goodbye. He’s never loved anyone that long, not ever before. Not that she’d lived for nine hundred years, but oh he’d hoarded his days with her away, like the miserly old man he was.
And now.
Now he was alone, and had been since he’d said goodbye – he was no fit company for anyone, and he felt guilty about it even as he wandered the halls of his beloved ship, pausing to press a hand against the wall as he struggled to simply find the strength to move.
Don’t travel alone.
He felt oddly like he was violating a promise he’d made her long ago, but stubbornly, childishly, he was punishing her and himself. Because he’d asked her, begged her, made her swear up and down she would never leave him, knowing every single time that it was a lie.
But if anyone could change her future – who else but River Song? The woman who’d shaped her own life like some sort of artist – smoothing and shaping her own past, her own future, her own present until she fit into every niche of his life.
Some part of him always felt like he was going to come up with some brilliant solution – some get out of the Library free card.
Some other part of him was utterly convinced that he never would. She would save herself – save him before he ever could begin to sort a plan.
So he lived his life in the mire in between, and he oddly became what he’d spent his whole life running from.
He waited.
He thinks he would have kept on waiting – if not for those letters.
xx
The TARDIS had never been the most subtle of ships. She never nudged him gently – instead she liked to drop him right in the middle of where she thought he ought to be – and damn what he’d thought during the piloting.
So when he starts walking into River’s office all the time, over and over – what should be the kitchen, the loo, the den, the games room, the pool, the console room – constantly opening a door to see her large wooden desk, the walls lined with books upon books – and old 1934 Corona Silent typewriter pushed to the edge of her side table, the shadow boxes on the back wall, filled with all of her favourite dig discoveries.
He feels his hearts ache at the sight, because a large percentage of them are his. And over half of them are love letters written to her in a flight of fancy. He’d once spent an entire year skipping through history and leaving her notes in tombs, lines of poetry and some positively dreadful prose – but he’d felt like there could be no better way to profess his love for his archaeologist wife. And she’d hung them all proudly, in a place where she could always see them.
He can only open that door so many times, only to lurk in the doorway, hands gripping the frame until they ached as he inhaled deeply and trying to catch any hint of her perfume on the air. Eventually he has to step across the threshold, run his long fingers across the spines of her books, read the notes he’d left her across history as he peers into the shadow boxes and mutters about his dreadful rhyming skills.
“Clearly she loved me if she still admitted to being married to me after that one,” he said in a hoarse tone, the energy sapping from his body as his frame sagged into her office chair, his hands curling around the edge of her desk as he fought to keep his own emotions at bay. But this was where she would sit, glasses perched on her nose as she stared flirtatiously over the edges, telling him she’d just be one minute more and would he please stop pouting because it wasn’t as though he was going to bed to sleep. ‘Exactly River! All the more reason to pout!’
He stared at the shelves around him, looking at her books and journals and research. The one book he wouldn’t find in here had a faded blue cover, and their life’s stories – an epic romance spanning ages - pencilled in between the pages. He’d gone back for it in a moment of weakness. He’d read it in a moment of nostalgia. He’d kept reading it as a form of sweet torture.
Every page was written with love and love and love.
No that book was nestled on his bedside table – for those days when he couldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t leave the ghost of her long enough to even make his usual sad attempt at life.
He closed his eyes, dropping his head to the smooth wood of her desk and inhaling softly until he felt the rising wave of loss and hopelessness recede. It never ever went away, but some moments he felt less hollow than others. But there was always some level of vacancy within him now.
He can breathe easier for a moment when he catches the light scent of the citrus lotion she’d used on her hands, and he opens his eyes carefully. Just below his eye level, to the left, a drawer was slightly ajar, with a corner of paper sticking out of it.
It’s probably research, he thinks as he reaches down, his hearts racing. But it is something new, written in her hand, and it is like having her back – just for a second – her voice in his ear as he reads words she’s written.
He doesn’t expect the letters. Maybe half a dozen envelopes, yellowed with age and tied with a red ribbon.
And all of them labelled neatly, in River’s looping scrawl, Mum and Dad.
xx
Dear Mum and Dad,
It’s a bit odd you know – I don’t think I’ve ever written you a letter. Honestly – how could I? Where would I send it to? When? I think I wrote you a thousand letters in my head as I was growing up with you. Dear Mum, would you please just notice that Dad is very not gay? Dear Dad, Just man up, for god’s sake. Or for mine, at the very least. Dear Mum and Dad, I don’t remember anything that happened last night and I’m scared. Dear Mum and Dad, it’s Christmas and I wish I could be with you. Dear Mum and Dad, you made me a birthday card today and signed it ‘from Amy and Rory’ and I smiled when you handed it to me, but cried about it afterward. They didn’t let me keep it.
Sometimes I think that maybe having to forget so much, so often when I was younger became some sort of habit. I don’t like to remember. Not anything.
But seventeen days ago, we lost you. I say ‘we’ but I think I mostly mean him. I should mean me too, but I’ve not – I’ve not been able to think about it, not really. Mum, I think he still hates me, just a little bit, for telling you to go. Lord knows I love the Doctor, but his selfishness knows no bounds. But people in glass houses and all that – I’m nothing but selfish when it comes to him. So who am I to judge?
You had to go. I mean, I know he understands that on some level – but it was a deep cut for him to realise that it was always Rory. That it would always be Rory. I can’t – I can’t really talk about that graveyard yet, or how it felt, because I’m still onboard and if I do, he’ll know. He’ll see the damage.
And we both know that can’t happen.
So I’m writing you a letter I’ll never send and no one will ever see but me.
So this is what I wanted to say: I love you both. And I miss you so much. And I know that you’ll be the best parents possible, even if it’s not to me. I cheated, you know, never could resist a spoiler – found you and read all about your lives, and not surprisingly – you were brilliant. Dad, I’m sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye. I really, really wish I had.
Everything hurts, but I’m handling it. I have to – it helps to have someone to be strong for.
I should go. I’m not sure if this made me feel better, or worse, or just simply made me feel.
I wish I could hug you both – one last time. I never even got that – I have to go. I love you.
Yours,
Melody
He didn’t open the other letters. Not just yet – not – not just yet. The words on the page blurred together, circles bleeding into one another and he realises two things.
One, she’d written the entire letter in Gallifreyan. And his hearts clench around that small fact because surely that meant she knew no one but him could ever read them. No one but him, and she’d left them here, in an unlocked drawer, in her unlocked office – surely if she’d never wanted him to read them, she’d have done more than this.
Two, he is crying. The loss of the Ponds had happened nearly six centuries ago for him – but his memory is long and perfect, no matter how much he pretends and wishes it weren’t. I don’t like to remember. Not anything. Sometimes he forgets the most obvious things though. Sometimes he remembers River and remembers how much he loves her, how much she loves him, how happy they had been. He forgets just how well she understood him. Not simply that she knew his history, knew his stories, and knew his life like he knew hers. No – she understands beyond even that. She understood him, at his very core – they were the same, in all the most fundamental ways. It steals his breath now, as her words swim and blur in front of him.
She’d mentioned him only three times. Each time to discuss how she thought he hated her, how he was selfish beyond compare and how she would hide from him. Every word felt like a barb, deep in his hearts, but he cries because he thinks he’s never read a more astonishing love letter in his life.
She lists all his fatal flaws, and then claims his flaws as her own. “River...” his whisper aches with pain as his fingers shake, stroking over the ink carefully.
He had thought reading something new would make him feel better, but it was only rubbing old wounds raw, and he feels his sores, open to the air and uglier for it. Every breath hurts, and those words are like maggots, burrowing into his flesh and eating him from the inside out.
He feels sick, and alone and utterly unworthy of anything he’s ever been given. “I never thought of you – what a rubbish, wretched husband I was, dear.” His ship hums in concern but he shakes his head, clutching the letter against his chest like it can salve the wound, and he stumbles over to the lounge chair in the corner. He curls around the letter, tucking his chin to his chest as he inhales deeply, catching hints of that hand lotion she’d used.
He falls into a restless sleep in which he dreams she is happier in the Library than she’d ever been in his arms. He hates to watch it, feels like he is filling up to overflowing with some dark, black feeling that is twisted and ugly – but he cannot wake up. She deserves to be that happy.
And he deserves to watch it.
xx
He doesn’t read any letters for a while, because he needs some sort of recovery period. He lands a few times, saves a few people, but he never makes new friends. Not – not yet. He’s not ready.
He’s not sure he’ll ever be.
One night he finds himself once again opening doors that all lead back to her office, and he knows this is his ship’s impatience with him. She whirs indignantly in agreement. You’ve had your sulk. Carry on.
So he cracks his neck, and shrugs off his overcoat, and settles into her chair once more.
And he opens the next letter.
Dear Mum and Dad,
Something I’ll never ever confess to anyone ever is the fact that I have always envied you both. And also thought you were mad for the same reason, but I’ve always been contrary – so why stop now?
You both got to grow old together. You lived, you loved, you did everything – always, together.
Sometimes I want that so badly, it’s like I can’t breathe. Usually when I do – it is when he’s younger. When he knows nothing about anything (well he always knows nothing about anything, but when he’s young it’s more noticeable than usual) and looks at me like I am a stranger.
It makes me long for a life where we just go at the same pace, forward, together. It makes me miss the silver in his hair and the lines around his eyes. He doesn’t age, not really but something in the weight of his frame, and how he sways toward me when I stand next to him – I almost never need to check my diary to know how old he is.
Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like. Falling in love together instead of completely apart. Living out our lives in his ship, constantly having adventures but together. He’s asked me to stay more times than I can count, and I never ever say yes. Silly isn’t it?
Because at the same time, that thought scares me more than anything in this universe. Domesticity and normality – he’d never have loved me at all. The thought of it makes my skin crawl, because I’d rather have what we have now, than some utterly normal love he’d fall into and out of the way he runs through hats. I’ve never been the type of girl you love day in and day out anyway. Too high strung or too much work or just never enough – I’ve seen it all.
I probably shouldn’t say that – you’d scold me. But even you two couldn’t seem to love me on a day-to-day basis, really. As Mels I felt like a burden to be bourn and now well, I guess I feel like you never knew what to feel about me at any given moment. I understand, I do – it’s not an easy concept to grasp that I am Melody, am Mels, am River, am all of them all at once. But you look at me and see separate people each time, and all of my time as Mels, as River, I feel like you were wishing for Melody back.
I could never give that to you.
And I would never let him give it to you. I think maybe you both knew that, deep down. I think you might have resented me for it.
I don’t know why I’m writing any of this, but I can’t talk to you, and I just got back from a picnic with him- well. Not even your Raggedy Man Mum. He was different, yet the same, and so, so sad. Like it hurt him to look at me, like just being there with me felt like some sort of obligation.
I missed the bowtie.
But oh, how much I still loved him.
Always.
Yours,
Melody
He drops his head to the desk, his chest aching and his sobs echoing throughout the empty room. His cries eventually subside and he lifts his head to glare at the artefacts lining the wall. False, pathetic, empty words of love – he doesn’t think he even knew the meaning of the word then.
His hands twitch with a desperate urge to tear them down, re-write history and leave her words with weight and meaning. Words like until the end of time, and your pain is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. He wants to rip through their shared history, loop back and yell at his younger self for being so sightless and stupid and thick. How had he not seen any of this? How had he looked into her eyes, and never looked?
He wants to erase and rewrite them, again and again until the words are perfect. Until her pain is his pain, and they share everything. His hands clench around this letter, wrinkling the edges as his vision darkens.
He wants- not one line. Don’t you dare.
He wonders if she found it funny – that when he’d said it back to her for the first time from her perspective – he’d spoken the words like some terrible thespian on the stage – stilted words that lacked meaning or understanding. But when she’d said them – oh she’d meant them within every inch of her soul.
He wants her back, so he can prove to her that he can and does love her the same way. That he’s falling more in love with her now, even after death.
He just wants her.
His hands uncurl from the page and he smoothes it flat against the desk. He has to show it care. He has to love these letters, like he’d never been able to love her.
It’s as close as he’ll get.
xx
Dear Mum,
Okay I know that these are supposed to be for both of you but I just – just needed to talk to you. Do you want to hear something crazy?
Like absolutely, insanely crazy?
I watch the way he mourns you – oh Dad too, but mostly you. Come along, Pond. How he blindly grieves you. I wonder sometimes.
If there’d been no Dad. Would he have ever – I mean if I weren’t yours and were here but- why do I even think about these things?
I watch him mourn, Mother, and I wonder.
Will he ever even mourn me that much?
He’s so closed off at times; I fear that I’ll forever be outside.
It’s crazy. It’s crazy.
It’s insane – I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wrote it – I’m – I’m sorry.
I miss you.
Melody
The entire letter has a cross through it – like she’d hated it – loathed her own weakness in writing it. But in the margin, in English, she’d written tiny, faint words. You’ll never be a Pond. You’re a River. Tears spring to his eyes as he looks at them, his hearts breaking as he rubs a hand over his face wearily.
He’s failed her in every way possible, he thinks.
He suddenly cannot stand to be there – in her room, surrounded by her things. He lurches up, and runs out of the room, and down the corridor. He keys in coordinates and flips switches and pulls levers, spins dials and twists knobs until his hands move automatically, because he no longer sees anything.
When he lands, he doesn’t run to the door – he cannot. Nothing but death and shadows wait outside of it. Instead he turns on the scanner, and sees the face of a child plastered on a node, and she smiles at his ship sadly – hope in her eyes that dies slowly the longer his ship stays there and no one emerges.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry River.” He swallows and his hands grip the bar below the screen, he is barely hanging on and it hurts so much. She is right out there.
And she’s never been further away.
He doesn’t know what to do – how to make this pain go away or ease – and he fears nothing will ease it. Nothing but telling her all of these things and he is far, far too late for that. “Lord of time, ha.” His voice is hollow and it feels like this is the universe’s punch line. He drags a hand over his face and he feels his ship, nudging insistently at the back of his mind.
She wants him to finish reading.
He never wants to read another word again.
Better to run, he thinks.
Better to run.
xx
He’s good at it though - running and running and running – he’s the best. He sees stars born, and watches them die, he studies supernovas, and toes the threshold of black holes, and he contemplates the idea of just – just tossing those infernal letters in.
He was never meant to read them. It was a violation of River’s privacy – and she’d never said these things to him for a reason.
The TARDIS has other ideas, though, and one night he goes to sleep in their bed, in their room, his hand flung out and wrapped around her diary – he needs the stories of love, love, love to get him through the days, he thinks.
He wakes face down on her desk, his hand on a dwindling pile of letters – only three left now. “I don’t want to,” he protests in a sleepy voice and the ship remains silent as he closes his eyes. He can practically feel her censure – she knew everything about you and loved you wholly, Thief. It is your turn now.
He knows she’s right. So he lifts the next letter – ‘Dad’ scrawled on the envelope in an unsteady hand.
Dear Dad,
I’m ready to talk about it now. But it has to be you – it was always you, wasn’t it?
Don’t tell Mum.
I didn’t get to say goodbye to you, and I think maybe this should be my last letter. I think I need to say goodbye, and that’s the only thing that will ever make me feel any better.
And I can’t say goodbye until I talk about it.
That Day.
I didn’t even see you disappear – god I was in the TARDIS, thinking about what to wear to the pub. Like that mattered. I didn’t get to see you disappear – I didn’t get to say goodbye. God, the last thing I said to you Dad, was ‘Right, family outing then.’ I mean – it wasn’t even direct to you either.
But what would I have said?
I don’t know – I hate to think of it – I can’t – let me tell you what happened after. Amy – Mum knew. She knew she had to go too – to be with you. He begged her Dad. Begged her to come with him, not to go – and I told him to shut up.
Of course she should go with you.
Anything else was unthinkable. Mum – she – she told me to look after him, and to be a good girl and that – I guess, strictly speaking I didn’t get a good bye with her either.
She said goodbye to the Doctor.
He – Dad – he just lost all control. I’d never seen him - never like that. I watched the angel. Someone had to. He certainly wasn’t. It wasn’t – it wasn’t smiling but when I dream about it – it is. Smiling. It mocks me.
I see it all the time.
It felt like it didn’t even really happen. Like I’d just watched something – but it – it wasn’t my parents. Not my friends.
Not my family.
He apologised – afterward. Said that he didn’t even realise ‘River they were your parents,’ and I couldn’t – I couldn’t say anything for a moment, because everything was too close and too much and I just-
I lied Dad.
I told him it didn’t matter.
I lied Dad.
I – I lied.
I have to say goodbye don’t I? I don’t want to – but it’s his style to refuse to say it – not mine. So Dad, I loved you more than I can ever properly tell you. You were everything good in a man, everything kind and patient and noble. You were always the unsung hero, and I loved that about you. I was brave Dad, but not because Mum told me to be that way – I was brave because I learned it from you.
And Mum (of course you’d be reading this over his shoulder- like you care that it only had his name on it) I learned so much from you. How to have fun, how to protect the people I loved, how to flirt – how to drink – even if you’d rather forget you taught me that one. I loved you. You both raised me well, even if you didn’t know you were doing it. And you made me feel loved growing up, and that was important because you were the only ones to make me feel that way.
I think it’s a lot of the reason I was able to resist the brainwashing. I think you made a difference, and you taught me how to love.
I never wanted to say goodbye – not when I feel like we’ve barely said hello. It wasn’t enough time. But how much would ever be enough? I know you’ll take care of each other, and I know you’ll live out the quiet minutia of the happily ever after of this fairy tale.
Enjoy it. Ride off into the sunset. Get some dogs and lie in on Sundays, and love each other a lot.
I love you.
The end.
He sits, stunned, staring at the letter, and staring at the last two words until he sees them when he closes his eyes. The end. “No,” he whispers, his voice growing in strength. “No. This is not the end – I – I refuse to believe that this is the end, River Song. You’ve torn apart time itself to save me, and I give you a half life trapped in a hard drive?”
He swallows, shaking his head and looking around wildly. Standing he starts scanning the shelves, pulling books down – he’s sure the TARDIS is supplementing River’s shelves, but he’s not going to complain. “I’m going to save her. Properly. Really. I am going to save her or join her,” he mutters as he flips through books, speed reading and searching desperately.
He’s a bit scared by how appealing both options seem. River out here, with him again, or spending eternity with her in as close to an afterlife as he could manage.
He doesn’t care if she lives or he dies – he just needs her back.
xx
Dear Mum and Dad,
I know I said I wouldn’t write again but I lied. I do that. Who else would I write to, honestly?
Do you remember, Dad, that conversation we had in Florida? It was the strangest thing really – because – well because you always have asked haven’t you? Even when you didn’t know who I was, had absolutely no clue – before I even existed for you – you always seemed to know when I wasn’t quite right. You always asked. When I was Mels, when I wasn’t. I never could refuse you Dad.
I think the end – my end is getting closer. The gaps between his visits are growing – he came to see me tonight, asking to compare diaries and he always does that doesn’t he? What have I done – never ever when did you see me last? Truth be told, I know he’s going longer between visits. The last time I saw his older self – the way he looked at me – it was like he’d not done so for ages. Does he wait so long because he grows bored? Because his interest is waning as he grows older?
Nothing lasts forever – least of all love.
Before tonight I hadn’t seen him for almost three years. The time before that it was almost six. There is so much I want to tell him – but I can’t, not ever. Where would I begin? Where would I start? Either he’s far too young or just far too- too old.
I miss popping by for wine and gossip Mum. I miss Dad’s hugs, and how he’d threaten to kick the Doctor’s arse for me. Even though you knew I would perfectly capable of doing it myself, Dad. I just miss you both so much. It’s – I don’t even think it’s that I miss my parents – but you were my best friends too. And I miss that dearly.
Sometimes...
These letters don’t make me feel better. Weren’t these supposed to make me feel better?
Okay, what would you both say to me now? Well, Mum, you’d tell me if he’s dragging his skinny arse about coming to see me, I should just go and find him. And that nothing’s over until we say it’s over. And Dad, you’d tell me to stop wasting time worrying about what’s coming, and cherish what I have now. It’s not about how much time we have, it’s how we use it.
And you’re both right – as usual.
What would I do without you two?
Oh god – I can’t. I have to go. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. Mum, I just don’t know if I can be brave enough for this. I’ve always hated endings.
Yours,
Melody
His hearts race as he frowns down at the letter. She doesn’t sound – it’s years after her last one, and maybe that explains it but he isn’t – isn’t sure. Something is off. Something isn’t right. It niggles at his mind and he stares at the letter in his hands.
He’d never thought about how much time he could have filled in at her end. And now he can’t, because she said he hadn’t. He sighs, pushing the letter aside, when the last envelope catches his eye.
His hand shakes as he picks it up – he’s never read two in a row before. And this is the last one. But his eyes are fastened to her writing, concentric circles and straight lines.
Hello, sweetie.
He closes his eyes for a moment, tremors spreading through his limbs ad he holds it. Her final letter.
Her final letter – to him.
Hello my love,
You know it has occurred to me during the course of writing these letters that I am married to the alien equivalent of a housecat. Bless.
Well, no – your sense of grace leaves something to be desired, but you definitely are almost infinitely curious, and also like a good stroking every now and then. Oh don’t make that face, honey – you know it’s true. The best course of action would probably be to hide them. Elsewhere. Or maybe to destroy them – after all I never meant for them to serve any purpose other than a place for me to expel irrational feelings that felt so out of place within my own hearts.
But then – but then I think that to do that would feel like hiding, and I don’t want that. Maybe you’ll never read this. Any of them. Maybe you will. I’m going to write this assuming you have, and I think I should explain a few things.
Don’t you ever, Doctor, not ever think that I didn’t know how much you loved me. You are total rubbish at saying it properly, I know that. You do ridiculous things instead like kidnap pop stars from my youth, and etch really terrible poetry on ancient alien ruins. All of your gestures that are even meant to be remotely romantic usually wind up with some sort of security detail chasing us, if we’re lucky. If we’re unlucky it tends to be less security and more monsterous and intent on eating us.
But sweetie, I’ve always known. Even in the moments that you’ve hurt me – and I’m not so stupid to lie and tell you that you never have – I knew that if you made a very long list of everything you wanted to do in the universe ever, and I mean everything ever, at the very bottom of that list, the very last thing would be to hurt me. It doesn’t mean you never did. Of course you did. Hurting you would be an endnote to a footnote on my list as well, but I have hurt you. And I know that.
I’ve always known that you love me. When you bluster about flying better than I do but you always let me fly when I’m here. The look on your face every single time you hold me close enough that I can feel your heart beats and you can feel mine. The way you expect me to be better than even you sometimes.
What I don’t want you to take away from these letters is that I somehow hid all of this uncertainty from you for centuries. That’s impossible, firstly, and I never would, secondly. I wrote these letters as a way to combat my own grief, my love. And sometimes you were collateral damage in that battle.
Because you had the simple distinction of being the only other person in my hearts, and after losing my parents – it suddenly occurred to me that I will eventually lose you too. It’s the nature of our timelines, one day you won’t know me. And everything will be ending around me, and I’ll have to smile, and flirt, and somehow make you fall in love with me. Do you know how monumental and insurmountable a task that will be?
I told Rory once (and he was Rory then, not Dad – maybe that’s what made it easier to say. I was nothing to him then but the Doctor’s... whatever) that I think that day may kill me. Here’s something I would never say out loud or burden you with – in my darkest moments, I sometimes hope it does.
It’s not that my whole life is about you, my love – though I know you like to think yourself that grand at times. It’s just that I’ve never not known of you, heard about you, hated you, tolerated you, loved you. You are not the only thing that makes up my life, but you are and always have been such a very large part of it. I feel that once I tear that out, there won’t be enough fabric left to stitch together. And memories of what we were is a weak thread to stitch with. They certainly are never enough to keep me warm in the longer stretches between your visits now.
I miss you.
And I know – I’m ridiculous because it’s all a bit my fault too, isn’t it? How many times have you asked me to travel with you? How many times have I said no? But oh, my love, how many times I’ve longed to just say – screw the universe and our timelines. Say yes. But I nearly destroyed the universe for love of you once; I don’t think you’d forgive me a second lapse in judgement.
Mostly what I want to say is this, my Doctor. While I have written five letters that have expressed my frustration with the various challenges that come with loving a man who is ageless and selfish, and absolutely wonderful. Five letters, Doctor. Over five hundred years. Five letters in comparison to an immeasurably large diary. I have been happy. We have been happy. Don’t lose sight of all those moments because of these letters.
Even when I am so – so hurt that it feels like I can’t even look at you – I still love you. Always Doctor. Forever – I’ve loved you for so long now – as long as I exist in this universe in some way or form, with you or not – you are loved.
Don’t feel guilty – god you are so extraordinarily good at that, aren’t you? Sixteen hundred years of honing the skill, I suppose you would be. You let things linger, Doctor. You nurse wounds. You let them fester instead of heal, and I don’t want you to do that. You need to learn to let go.
If nothing else, sweetie – be happy. For me, because it will make me happy to know that you’re happy.
I love, honey. Forever – neither time nor space between us will ever change that. And I was loved – I’ve been loved and that was always largely because of you. Don’t forget that.
I’ve always consented and gladly given you my hearts. Take care of them, my Doctor.
Yours,
River x
He stares at the pages for a long time afterward, reading the words over and over again, like he can use them like thread and stitch himself back together.
He is left with a ragged representation of his hearts when he finally stops reading and reading and reading, but he feels whole for the first time in ages. This is why his ship insisted he read these – as usual, even years after her death – he needed his wife to point out his short comings with cutting language, and then remind him that he is loved, regardless of that.
He nurses wounds – he is the Doctor but that is what he does and he knows she is right. So he swallows, and pulls a blank sheet of paper toward him with a heavy ache in his chest that he hopes to lighten.
xx
Every day is perfect in the Library. The sun shines, the water laps gently at the shore and River Song doesn’t notice any of it because she has spent every day the same way she spent the day before that, and the day before that, and the day before that.
Searching for a way out.
She tells Charlotte that it’s not that she isn’t grateful, but this was never what she imagined. An endless perfect existence in a manufactured world where nothing was real – not even the people, not really. Anita and Evangelista and the Daves have all forgotten. That there was a life before this – that none of this is real.
River has forgotten enough to last her fifteen lifetimes. She’s no intention of forgetting again. She’s worked it out – given a few years it wasn’t that difficult. A bit like teleportation which basically transfers genetic material into a coded program to be streamed, scrambled and rematerialized on the other end. She knows her own genetic code inside and out. It takes her a few years, but she figures out how to send the signal from the Library’s database. It will burn a lot of hard drive space, but she and Charlotte have discussed it, and she’s willing to burn through the space to give River back the life she sacrificed to save all those people.
River never quite corrects her about her motives. It would hardly be charitable to point out that a majority of her reasons had been entirely selfish.
Everything is set, the only problem is timelines. She cannot simply transfer herself to anywhen. If she winds up inserting herself into the universe when she already exists, she could tear the fabric of time apart.
Been there, done that, kept the bowtie.
The problem is that she and the Doctor never really exchanged ages. She has no idea when she could go that would be post-Library for him. Or rather – post the Towers. Obviously everything was post the Library for him.
All that time – he’d known. She wants to be angry about it, but instead it only makes her sad – her poor Doctor – loving her when he knew there was a countdown. How horrible it must have been for him. “Oh my love,” she sighs as she checks the program – checks and rechecks the code once again. “What I need is some sort of marker. Some sort of timestamp to use,” she huffs out in irritation. Anytime she can find reference to him in the database, it’s always a much much younger version of him – “Damn you, honey. Erased yourself rather excessively well didn’t you? How am I supposed to find you now?”
So every day she checks the files, combs through books and references and files upon files for any tiny mention of him, something, anything that will tell her that this is a him, after she’d gone.
And every day she finds nothing.
Until today, because Charlotte skips into her lab with an excited grin, and River knows it must be important – because hardly any of them disturb her anymore. “I’ve just received a communication, River!”
Charlotte stops and holds out her empty palm. She frowns at it, concentrating, and slowly the light grows, and burns and paper weaves itself out of thin air and light until a bright blue envelope sits in her palm. River’s mouth drops open in shock. “For you,” Charlotte holds it out and River takes it with a small ‘oh’.
Silver gallifreyan swirls across the envelope, addressed simply ‘To my wife’. She feels a smile curl and stretch across her mouth – and tears spring to her eyes, because of three simple words. “Oh that impossible man,” she breathes out and Charlotte hovers, looking at her seriously.
“Is this what you needed?” She asks in a soft voice, “To leave?”
“It may very well be, Charlotte,” River answers her gravely and Charlotte nods. River looks at the small girl – so tiny, but an ageless mind within her and she smiles. “I don’t like goodbyes.”
“Then I’ll not make you say one,” Charlotte smiles up at her. “Only, thank you River Song. You saved all of those people. You saved me.”
“Oh the Doctor-”
“Did it for you,” Charlotte finishes simply, before hugging River tightly and then disappearing. River watches the spot where she just was, thinking that she is glad that Charlotte won’t be left alone in here. One deep breath, and her hands shake as she tears open the envelope eagerly.
Hello my dear,
I really ought to know better by now – you know as often as husbands always claim their wives are always right, I don’t think any of them ever believe it. And they ought to – they really really ought to, because they’re presented with daily proof.
So once again River, I’m forced to say it (I can picture you glaring right now – because when have I ever said it to you ? I haven’t, which is quite terrible of me, but I have said it. To others. Okay, fine – to the TARDIS. Sometimes. Well. I say it all the time in my head.) - you were right.
I get off track you know. Do you think maybe it’s the age? I hope not, really – but I am so very old now, River. I have lived so very long. And so much of it with you. I stray – in thoughts and in actions, and I mean to say a million million things and never quite properly convey it all accurately. Sometimes I think it’s pointless to try. Because how do you say I love you to someone that you love? Isn’t that utterly pointless?
But it isn’t pointless, and it always needs saying, and more than that – it needs meaning. I found these letters, River – in your office. And some of them hurt so badly, I had to run away from tiny pieces of paper. But it’s hard to run away from your own hearts – they have this nasty habit of going with you everywhere.
It’s taken me a long time to read all of them.
I think I needed that, River. All that time – because it let me find the beauty in the uglier truths you wrote down. That you saw those truths, and loved me regardless – River. My River.
And you’ve always been mine you know. It’s odd because you were mine before I ever met your mother, or your father. It’s true you know – you never can be a Pond to me, but that’s because you’ve always been my River. The day I found out who you were River – I was overjoyed.
Not because you were Amy and Rory’s, but because you were human plus and mine mine mine. I’m a selfish old man, and you know it – so I’m sure you will be utterly nonplussed by this information.
But I’ve been terrible River – utterly rubbish at appreciating you. And I know that now. You showed me that. I owe you an apology. A hundred, thousand million I’m sorrys. You taught me that love meant putting someone else first, and I never quite managed that or realised I should be doing that until it was too late, and you were gone.
I’m sorry to tell you, I didn’t let go. Not easily. Not at all really.
I did hoard your days with me away, like the miserable old man I am. So few to fill in. My diary swelled and my time left dwindled and I couldn’t handle that. The concept of that final day. The towers. You told me – spoiled me for that River, and set it in stone and I saved it and hid it away. Because worse than knowing it was my last day with you would be for me to do it early – and then never know which day was the last.
But even – even after River – I didn’t let you go. I couldn’t. I’d loved you for almost a thousand years at that point - longer than anyone else. I’d say anything, but for the TARDIS. I know you don’t mind. You’ve never minded. And she has always loved you – possibly more than me – which used to drive me absolutely mad when I was younger.
I’m straying again, aren’t I? I’ll stop myself before we get to the poetry, yeah? I’ve heard I’m absolutely horrid at it. Rude, by the way.
What I’m trying to do – what I’m trying to say River, is that I’m writing to you in an effort to combat my own grief. I don’t think I’m doing it very well. So I’ll say this – mostly because you’re not here to tell me to stop.
I’m sorry that I put you into what I knew was another type of prison for you. I couldn’t let you go.
I’m sorry that I was selfish, and that you had to be the strong one. I’ll never forgive myself for that – they were your parents. And it mattered. And I knew that – I knew you were lying to me when you said otherwise, but my own pain drowned that knowledge out.
I’m sorry that you didn’t get your family the way you properly should have. But I’m not sorry about that too, because if it had happened any other way, River – well. You know.
I’m sorry for every time I hurt you.
I’m sorry for every time I didn’t tell you what you meant to me.
I’m sorry I haven’t saved you, I’m trying – I truly am, River. I won’t give up – because if it were me in there – you’d tear every atom of this universe apart until you found a way. I will find a way.
I miss you so much – it’s like one of my hearts has stopped. Everything feels wrong, and no one shoots my hats and that makes me so sad River, I can’t even bring myself to wear them.
I love you. And that word feels so infinitesimally small, four letters, one syllable – it cannot possibly bear the weight of my meaning as I write it. Maybe it’s a multi-dimensional word. Do you think River? I think it must be. It must exist in every dimension there ever was, all at once. I think it must be infinite – somewhere within the o, maybe.
I love you so much it hurts. I love you so much it heals. I love you so much it defies several universal and natural laws, and I think it’s impossible. Almost.
You told me to let go. And I don’t think I can. I don’t think I ever ever can, so I can’t promise you that, and I’m sorry. But I promise you I won’t stop. I’ll go on, but I just can’t – you can’t ask me to let go River. That’s not fair – it really isn’t, because I know you. You and I – we’re the same cloth – it’s why we fit together so well, sewn tight. Tailored. So I know it’s not fair of you to ask me to let go, when you’ve not let go either. How could I when you still grip me so tightly River?
I can’t.
So I know you’ll hate this, but wait for me River. One way or another, I’m coming for you. And then I won’t be alone. And neither will you.
Wait for me.
Love,
Your husband x
She has to read it twice through the tears – laughing at some parts, beaming through others, but always with a constant ache. “Oh you idiot – you utter, total idiot.” She grins as she checks for the date – the origin, the precise location from which the letter was delivered into Charlotte’s systems. “When do I ever listen to you?”
xx
There is light, and then a warm glow – a welcoming hum that sounds like a song in her mind. And there is her beloved husband, standing there and gaping at her like a fish. So she smiles, and holds up the letter.
“Hi, honey – I’m home.”