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She looks old. Not old, old, but older. Almost older than he’s ever seen her – but then she’ll never be older than he’s ever seen her. This River is a professor and she’s been to Manhattan. She’s written a tawdry spy novel that neither she nor he wanted to be read in the first place.
And he hasn’t seen her for so long.
He never expected her to respect his desire for solitude, but she did and she had.
“Vastra called,” River announces when it’s clear he’s not finding the words. “You had an adventure.”
The smile on her lips is genuine, but there’s a sadness behind it that reminds him too much of his own. “Ever the dutiful wife,” he mutters. And he is as aware as she is that decades ago he would’ve walked up to her, right into her personal space and revelled in the scent of her, her proximity, maybe bobbed her on the nose or whispered into her ear.
Now everything between them feels uneasy and so, so fragile.
She shakes her head and shuts the Tardis’ doors behind her. Her eyes sweep through the console room, fingers trailing along the wall as she circles up to him. The hem of her simple black dress swishes around her knees, back and forth with the sway of her hips.
Everything has changed, the Doctor realizes once more. In this new design, River Song looks out of place with her tanned skin, sinful curves and golden curls. As if his eyes reject the amount of warm colours against the grey and blue interior.
“It’s never been a duty, my love.”
“I expected you sooner.”
River shrugs and tears her eyes from his. It sends a pang of guilt through him to realize that she feels out of place in this new Tardis too. In a sense, he supposes he’s taken another mother from her. “You wanted to be left alone.” Her eyes find his again and in this new light they are grey. He might miss the green. “You made that quite clear.”
“Of course I didn’t! That was a stupid lie.” It’s too soon, too soon for her to be piling guilt onto his shoulders. He already has mountains. One adventure, one mystery does not move those. She of all people is supposed to understand. His harsh voice tells her so. “Rule one of course, do you not know this by now, River?! I am always lying!”
For a split second that stricken look is there. The one she had on the pyramid, the one that speaks of such devastation. Like all those years ago, she blinks and the look is gone. Hiding the damage, but not quite. Her smile is a facsimile now, lacking warmth. “Of course I knew.”
River Song, always with the games and the spoilers and the knowing. She never has the answers he needs, or she does and refuses to give them. He was never supposed to lose Amy, the girl who waited. Not like that, not so sudden and in such a finite way. Never Pond. “Of course you did. Then why weren’t you here?”
“I was.”
“You left.”
“You asked me to.”
Well, if memory serves (and it always does), he didn’t exactly ask. More like shouted and demanded. Seeing her smile, hearing her talk was like salt in open wounds. He needed her to break the way he had, but River was always so strong, so unaffected. How could she be after what happened? “You never listen to me,” he points out sharply. “If you knew I was lying, why did you leave?”
River sighs warily, puts on fake cheer. “I think the new design is starting to grow on me. It’s honest. Her outside could do with a soap however, but then you never were much for cleaning.”
He gets up to follow her around the room, grabbing her wrist to yank her back to him. The uncharacteristically modest neckline of her dress dips in the commotion and he catches a glimpse of Tardis blue underneath. His next words a warning for himself as much as for her. “Don’t change the subject, River.”
She doesn’t flinch, or lift her eyes from his. “Honestly, it’s just soap and water, it won’t bite.”
“Why did you leave, wife?” This time he pulls hard enough to imbalance her, River predictably resists.
Yanking back with all her strength, she frees herself easily from his grasp and spins around with her eyes blazing and green again. “Oh now I am your wife again? You told me to leave.”
“I was lying!”
“I know!”
Oh that woman! Why can’t she ever be properly impressed into giving a direct answer? River Song with her spoilers and her coming and leaving. No one does that. No one makes him feel so human. He takes her to the most stunning vistas in the universe and she’ll smile and shrug her shoulders. But then she’ll look at him. He can’t impress her with the wonders of the universe, but that look tells him he doesn’t need to.
It’s not the wonder or the promise of adventure or the knack for impossible things that lure her to him. She can have all those things by herself. It’s him.
And she left when he needed her most.
“Travel with me then,” he’d asked.
“Whenever and wherever you want. But not all the time,” she’d answered.
After that it had been a matter of Time, as most things were. It was the Library all over again. She would leave, he just didn’t know when. What was the point of any of it if she was just going to up and leave?
What could possibly be the point now?
“I’m going to wash her,” River announces and makes to head off.
“Why?”
She tilts her head, her mass of curls shifting to the left, and looks at him as if he’s daft. “Because your blue box isn’t very blue at the moment.”
“Enough games River,” he grumbles. Growls more, really. He just wants a straight answer. Maybe an apology. “I needed you. If you knew I was lying, why did you leave?”
The smile fades from her lips, remnants of it frozen in the lines around her mouth. “Why did you lie?”
“I always lie.”
“Not like that. Not to me.” Her voice is soft, steady. But her eyes shimmer with hurt.
The Doctor swallows. She’s right. Not like that, never to her.
Her hand is cold as she lays it along his cheek, the tips of her fingers just brushing his temple. He can’t look at her. Not when her eyes shine with such love. But he can’t look away either. He never could escape her. “Why, Doctor?”
“You’re better off without me.”
She laughs at that and it sends shivers through him. This isn’t her usual laugh. The one infused with warmth and joy – when her voice alone does sinful things to him and her eyes dance with happy memories. This laugh is harsh and cold and disappointed. “Lie.” She draws her hand back and stands tall before him, a feat partially achieved by her trade-mark high heels but mostly just by her being River Song.
There’s no forgiveness in her features now, no softness in her stance, her face as sharp as the lines of her dress.
And when she speaks, her voice is clear and made of steel. “After all these years, after everything that happened, you tested me.”
He moves to object, hands flailing between them and words he hasn’t thought of yet on the tip of his tongue.
“That’s why you lied. That’s why I left.”
“I was grieving,” he mumbles weakly.
In reply, River roars. “So was I! They were my parents. My best friends. There are three people in this entire universe, three people who sometimes know who I am and two of them are gone. And my husband,” she spits the words out as if they’re poison, her eyes like flint as they bore into him, “my husband is so caught up in his own grief he can only push me away.”
“I...” He what? He’s not sorry. She doesn’t understand what it’s like for him, to watch all those he cares for die because of him. Every single time he allows himself to care, every time one of them worms their way into his hearts. Humans. So naive, so brave. So fragile.
They leave him. Every single time.
And she, River Song, Melody Pond, she is supposed to be different. She is supposed to understand. He thought she did understand.
“Go on then. Say it.”
He looks up then at the determined set of her mouth, the fire in her eyes. Something burns in his chest. He thinks it might be anger, or love, or guilt, or regret. He can’t tell.
“I’m your wife. I’m supposed to always be there for you, to always understand,” she needles, stepping right into his personal space. The ends of her curls just brush his chest. “I left when you needed me most. I left my husband to grieve another loss, another death. But tell me something, Doctor. Why does it hurt so much? Because they’re gone, or because she chose him over you in the end?”
Everything stills.
Time itself slows to allow for his brain to catch up with her angry words. Without thought, he slaps her.
The sharp sound of skin against skin rings in his ears, the impact thrills up his wrist. River doesn’t look surprised, doesn’t bring up her hand to soothe the burning skin of her cheek as she slowly swivels her head back to face him again. She just looks at him, waiting. “You disappoint me,” he bites, his anger now a living, breathing thing inside him.
As if she’d been waiting for that particular admission, her shoulders slump and her face melts into resignation.
Unable to face her, the Doctor turns and stalks off to one of the corridors.
“For what it’s worth,” even barely more than a whisper, her voice cuts through the haze of anger around him, “they both chose you over me.”
“I told you you’d be better off without me.” The brown of his shoes does rather clash with the Tardis’ new floors now that he looks down.
“I spend enough time without you to know that’s not true.”
Sure, bring that up. When is this farce of a conversation going to end? “Did you just come back to pour salt in my wounds, River?”
He’s not prepared for the naked look on her face when he glances over his shoulder. He’s never seen her this vulnerable, this raw. The beginnings of a bruise forming on her cheek. The uncertainty in her eyes springs out at him, robbing him of his breath.
And when she speaks, her voice is so small it sucks the anger right out of him. “Were you going to come back at all?”
This is River Song. She doesn’t do vulnerable, or emotional. She is strong and brilliant and mad. She is his wife and he is her husband.
Oh.
Oh stupid, selfish Doctor! It finally clicks what she’s been trying to tell him. And oh he is daft and blind and stupid. He shakes his head violently, crossing back to her with long strides. He’d been angry that she tried to make him feel better. Angry that she couldn’t make him feel better. Angry that she stayed, angry that she left.
He needed his wife, but he never stopped to think that she might need her husband.
“River.” He buries his hands in her wild curls and rests his forehead against hers, eyes shut against the maelstrom of emotion in his chest. “Always. I’ll always...” But he won’t, will he? Four centuries since he condemned her to a life of bits and bytes. He thought he’d saved her, that mad, know-it-all archaeologist who made him feel things he hadn’t been ready to feel. Who knew his name.
He gave her an afterlife any human would love, but River is Time Lord. The odd passage of time inside a computer core would drive her insane. She’d never be able to suspend disbelief enough to be happy. He knew that now, he’d known for centuries and he still hadn’t gotten her out.
He pulls back from her – so alive, so real – as if burned. There’s nothing he can do to make up for all the pain he’s caused, will cause her. But River comes with him, her fingers clutching the lapels of his jacket and her lips suddenly crushed against his.
He’s hardly processed her moving or the sudden appearance of a wall at his back when her tongue licks his bottom lips, not so much asking entrance as demanding it.
Clara did the same thing, he recalls. Kissing him without warning. But then River is his wife, he supposes that means she’s allowed to (and he doesn’t exactly mind much. Or at all), whereas Clara is, was, very much, well, not. He hasn’t kissed, or been kissed like that by someone other than River since their wedding. Okay, hadn’t been kissed much, or by a companion.
And it’s not like River has minded in the past, but this time he hadn’t told her. He hadn’t even told Clara. Hadn’t thought there was a point, he’d only see River once more before... The Doctor swallows, blinking back tears and only then realizes that the kissing has regretfully stopped.
River has backed away a few steps and stares at him with an unreadable expression. “Right then,” she says quietly, “that’s my cue.” She spins on her heels, the hem of her skirt flaring up and exposing tantalizing stretches of leg. It takes a few seconds to realize that she is in fact not moving towards one of the corridors, but instead to the main doors.
He moves to make after her, to tell her... something. Anything to make her stay. She cannot leave him again, he won’t allow it. But he never could find words for her and this time is no different. It resurrects his anger – at himself for being so bloody useless and at her too, for being so un-River like. He doesn’t know her like this, all insecure and damaged.
Why does she always have to be right? He can’t handle her damage too. Selfish, selfish Doctor.
His hand closes around her wrist just before she reaches the door and he yanks her back with all his might, spinning her until her back slams against the Tardis’ doors. Actions speak louder than words after all and there are better uses for his mouth right now.