Chapter 5

Once upon a time, there was an old, old man with a young, young face. And he sat upon a cloud and mourned for everything he had lost. He cried for his best friends, lost to time and ensnared in a web of paradoxes. But you could have gone to New Jersey and taken the train, a small voice that suspiciously sounded like his wife echoed in the back of his mind. But he ignored it. Better to let them live happily in the past than succumb to a horrendous fate that would tear them apart permanently.

But for all the tears shed for his best friends, none equalled those that he cried for his wife. Even the mention of her first name cause his air supply to violently cut off, for his eyes to fill, and for his hearts to pound so fast and so hard that he fell to his knees until he could breathe again. Clara, innocent Clara, had spoken River Song's name once and had no clue of the power she wielded over him. River Song was his goddess, his Kryptonite. His greatest guilt now that Gallifrey was safe.

The Doctor stared into a reflective surface on the console, his features twisted and distorted. It was the closest thing to a mirror he could stand looking into at the moment. Everything River had said was the truth. All those years he could have at least sent a bloody fax into the datacore, and he had ignored her. Oh yes, there was one thing about the Library that both he and River knew – that it wasn't a fixed event. At any point he could have stopped it. But at what cost to all those people, to Donna? All because he was a selfish old man who wanted his wife. His wife who, like him at one point, had been on her last regeneration.

Instead, he had trapped her in a cage infinitely bigger, infinitely harsher than Stormcage and ran. He ran to escape the pain, to escape the obligation he had to her and her parents. Because if it hurt this much now, what if he saved River only to see her die again? The Doctor had been around humanity to know the stark truth. Rescuing River would only give her borrowed time. She was in the database core. She was safe. She would have freedom, he had blindly thought.

What a bloody arse he was.

The Doctor tugged at the collar of his shirt until the buttons loosened, and he didn't feel like he was about to choke on his own guilt. River was his equal, and he had done the one thing she asked him not to do – not to make the decisions for her. He remembered that night so long ago, when he told her about Donna. She, in fury, had ordered him not to make those choices on her behalf. He lied, because he had already done it.

He sank wearily to the steps, dragging his hands over his face before leaning forward to rest his arms on his knees. There was no way he could begin to apologize to River for this. Despite the guilt, he wasn't even sure he regretted the move. It had been done against her wishes, but he had saved her in the end. He had saved her, but he wondered if in the process, he had eradicated her trust in him.

River was angry. She was so angry. Everything about her time in the Library bubbled close to the surface, and the only reason she didn't punch the closest wall was because of her love of the TARDIS. It wasn't her fault that the Doctor was a sodding idiot who didn't understand why she was so upset. She pressed the palms of her hands to her forehead, trying to ward off the oncoming migraine that was starting to throb. Talking to the Doctor about emotions and their marriage was like addressing a brick wall, though she was quite sure the wall was more responsive. River stomped up the stairs and was two seconds into the corridor when she heard the soft weeping.

Clara.

She closed her eyes and forced her emotions back behind her carefully erected walls and did her best to ignore the headache. The Doctor didn't know about Clara's miscarriage, about the deep sense of betrayal she felt over Danny choosing the life of an anonymous boy over hers. River understood how Clara felt. Self-sacrifice to save the life of an innocent? That was the Doctor's schtick, not hers. She would choose him each and every time. Even the act of saving the 4,022 wasn't from an altruistic part of her soul. It was because he was seconds away from incinerating his own hearts, giving up what remained of his regeneration energy to save them. Had he done so in his tenth body, he would have never met tiny Amelia Pond and learned about the crack in her wall. Her marriage, her very life, would be undone in a moment of self-sacrifice because he put the lives of innocent people above his own.

Sod that. River was firmly on Team Clara with this one.

She pivoted and walked back into the small library she had just passed, where Clara had curled into an oversized leather chair tucked among rows of books. She had a balled handkerchief in her hand, eyes red-rimmed from weeping.

"I'm OK," Clara muttered as River approached.

"No, you're not." When Clara scowled at her, River chuckled. "I'm not OK either," she admitted.

"No, you're not," Clara agreed and gestured to the door. "You two were having another quiet argument."

"It's one of our talents." River squeezed her shoulder. "Him Indoors is going to be flouncing in at any moment, and you're not quite feeling up to round two as of yet I take it. Follow me."

"OK." Clara unfolded herself and trailed after River. Instead of going back to her study, she directed Clara into another area of the TARDIS. This had sweeping gardens and a night sky with a large ball of energy, bubbling and sparkling as it hovered on the very edge of becoming a black hole. She sat on one of the benches and admired the spectacle.

"The Doctor called this the Eye of Harmony," Clara observed as she sat next to River. "I saw it once, or I think I did. It's a bit jumbled up in my memory, and I think it got erased at some point. Or maybe it's something that my echoes saw. I try not to think about it too much. I don't think I could handle it otherwise."

River had heard the same thing out of the mouths of a number of the Doctor's other companions.

"It's nice," Clara continued. "Didn't think looking at a supernova would be calming. But, there you have it."

River left Clara to her thoughts and wandered aimlessly through the familiar TARDIS corridors. She poked her head in various doors, idly noting any changes to the old girl. Clearly the eighth ice cream parlor she counted was a holdover from her baby-faced husband's time. This one didn't have anywhere near the love of sugar that he had.

She found herself back in their bedroom, rifling through the drawers and closet once more. Her first time in here had been looking for something decent to wear. Now she catalogued things with a shrewd eye, absently remembering the time that Amy had read Marie Kondo's organization books and had torn around the house determined to purge everything that didn't bring her joy. In the end, the only thing that Amy had purged was a ratty old jumper of Rory's, which caused quite the amusing row between them.

The Doctor had eyed River warily after that.

"You wouldn't do that, would you, dear?" He had asked hesitantly.

"Oh, sweetie, I don't need to take care of your packrat tendencies. The TARDIS does that all on her own."

River laughed to herself at the memory of the Doctor's horrified expression and his insistence that a complete inventory of everything stowed on the TARDIS be done at once. She wondered if it ever finished. Moving to a small data center that tapped directly into the center console, River called up the inventory program.

"Still running," she murmured, then shook her head. "Probably forgot what he was even doing with it."

Absently, River pulled open the top drawer of the nightstand on the Doctor's side of the bed and froze. She swallowed hard, then picked up the overstuffed fragile diary. Her sonic, which had laid atop it, rolled off and joined the other detritus in the drawer. She sank to the mattress, running her hand over the cover. She wondered what had happened to it, if he had ever bothered to do anything with it.

She wasn't sure how long she sat holding the diary, trying to work up the courage to open it. It was long enough that she startled when the mattress dipped beside her. She didn't even give a perfunctory protest when the Doctor took the book from her.

"When I took you to Darillium, when I waved you off on that trip to the Library, I curled into a ball on the floor of the console room," he said hoarsely. "I'm not sure how long I stayed there. Days. Weeks. Hell, probably months. Losing your parents was hard enough, but I couldn't get over losing you, even though I knew all along I would do so."

"I had the right to make that choice," she said, her anger drained as she visualized perfectly his younger self grieving her. "You knew all that time, and you never let me have a choice in my own fate."

"Shut up and let me talk." The Doctor took several breaths and stroked the cover of the diary. "I helped Clara because I never helped you. Because I thought I was too late to save you, and even if I had, it would only be to lose you again. You were on your last regeneration, and at the time, I saw no way around it. But I could save Danny for her. Maybe it wouldn't hurt so much if I did that. But when this happened, I never thought of not doing it."

She managed a tremulous smile.

"I'm sorry for letting you down," the Doctor continued. "You were right, every word of it. What you should be sorry for is not telling me before. I know, I know. That boy in the bow tie … he ran, didn't he? Not much for running in this face. I often wondered why I got this face, and I think it's because the face that this resembled one didn't run away. And he reminded me that I can't save the universe, but I can save one person. It took me awhile, dear, but I managed to finally do that."

He carefully opened the book, to a tiny paper envelope tucked between the final page and the back cover. He opened it, shook the small gold band onto his palm. "You didn't have it on," he observed.

"No. I'm never quite sure which version of you I was going to meet. One who had done Darillium … or my odds were one who hadn't.

He took her hand in his. "May I?" His voice was barely above a whisper and so full of nerves that it was endearing. "I understand if you want nothing of this. Nothing of me. After everything I did. I was a selfish old man, my dear. I'll be selfish again."

"Do you know how long I was in there for? I stopped counting after the first few centuries. My memory was trapped for far longer than I'd been alive, and no matter what I did, I couldn't find a way out of it. I even tried to delete myself. Charlotte stopped me."

"River …"

"Shut up," she snapped. "It's my turn to talk. You thought you gave me freedom. Instead, you gave me an empty paradise without my husband, without my parents. You thought I had some crazy intimate bond with my team, and yes we were friendly enough. But they weren't my family. Amy and Rory had each other, always. I'm not naive enough to think you would have saved a copy of yourself to the datacore for me. It's selfish and stupid to leave even the chance of your enemies coming across that. But I had no one that knew me for who I really was. I was shoved so high on a pedestal that it was suffocating. This is what you saved me to, Doctor. A goddess mother-figure that wasn't me one bit. I played the role because there was nothing else to do."

"Then when I finally projected my echo out, you ignored me again and again. Do you know what it was like to see you fall in love with Clara, when I was standing there practically shaking you?"

"I didn't love Clara," he shot back. "She's a child."

"Of course not. You're the Doctor. You don't do anything so small and ordinary as going around falling in love, not matter how much I … people convinced you do love them."

Unable to keep still, River tore her hand away from his, pushed to her feet and longed for her blaster. She wanted to feel the hum of the weapon beneath her fingers, to take out a wall and maybe some of the frustration along with it. Because the Doctor was staring at her like he'd never seen her before, and maybe he hadn't. Something about being restored to this life, seemed to lance the rigid self control she kept on her emotions. Maybe it was the fact that instead of running, instead of babbling, he was staring at her in shock.

"Do you know how it feels to know that you're going around the universe doing whatever the hell you want and not giving a damn about me in that datacore? And now you say that losing me paralyzed you, but I was never gone. I was right there for you the entire time, all you had to do was send a goddamn email."

She turned away from him, squeezed her eyes shut and figured now would be the good time for a convenient interruption. "Loving you is like loving the stars. You don't expect a sunset to admire you back or a monolith to promise you forever. I know that. I accepted it. I knew exactly what I was getting myself into on that pyramid. I knew it would end, and hell, it probably is over and I've been deluding myself these past day or so. There's no more pages in that diary, there's-"

"A monolith can't love you back."

She pivoted at his voice, stared into those blue eyes that were suspiciously bright. It was only then that she felt the moisture on her face, realized that she'd been crying the entire time.

He slowly got to his feet, clutching her ring. "Monoliths have been there for millions of years, through storms and floods and wars and time. Kind of like a non-sentient version of a Roman centurion. Now there's a role model for you."

Knowing he referred to the thousands of years that her father guarded her mother, sealed inside the Pandorica, River nodded.

"You're wrong, though."

"About which part of it?"

"A sunset can admire you back." He thumbed at his signet ring until it pushed up enough to reveal the worn plain band that matched the one he held. "I haven't taken this off since I regenerated," he admitted. "Everything ends, River, but not love. Not always. Wise woman once told me that. Lovely psychic. Popped back a few years and put a bug in Hanna and Barbera's ears that she'd be an excellent model for Velma on Scooby Doo."

"Doctor."

"I digress." He moved to River's side and took her hand once again. "Everything ends, River. Every night is the last night for something, every Christmas is the last Christmas. I finally healed and moved on. I thought it was what you wanted for me."

"It is," River admitted. "But I was never actually dead, Doctor."

"No," he replied, "but the odds of retrieving you in one piece from the data core were statistically impossible. Do you understand how this could have all gone wrong? You could have been a vegetable. You could have died permanently."

"I was fine with dying, Doctor!"

"I'm not!" He yelled, then dropped his head to her shoulder. "The universe thought you were dead, but you never were to me. As long as you were in that datacore, you were alive and you were safe. You would outlive me. I can't bear to think of a universe without River Song."

The anger drained from River in such a rush that it left her nearly lightheaded. The Doctor's free arm locked around her waist, and she found herself awkwardly trying to comfort him because he refused to let go of her hand. "Sweetie, I will always be in the universe, as will you. We are made of stardust, all of us. At some point in history, you and I are having Christmas with my parents, discovering the Pandorica, flirting in Richard Nixon's White House. We're running around a number of planets violating a shocking amount of public decency laws. I'm with you, even when you have no clue about who I am."

She forced him to look up at her, choking up as tears streamed down his cheeks. "I'm going to die one day. So will you. There will be no coming back from it. I don't want happily ever after, Doctor. I just want to be happy in the time I have with you. Because it's worth it."

He smiled through his tears. "Melody Pond, it's always worth it with you."

He pressed his lips to hers, with no hesitation this time, no fumbling. She wasn't quite sure how much time passed as they held each other, forehead pressed to forehead when they weren't kissing. When they finally managed to pull apart, he arched his eyebrows, and she nodded. He slid the ring back on her finger where it belonged, where it would no longer be hidden by a tiny chameleon circuit to disguise it from younger versions of himself. He kissed her hand, kissed the ring on it, then let it go.

"I forgive you," River said, admiring her hand, then fisting his jacket and yanking him until they were nose to nose. "If you ever do that to me again, I will remove your organs in alphabetical order," she hissed.

The Doctor smirked. "Which alphabet?"

"I hate you."

He kissed her nose. "No, you really don't."

Author's Note: Thank you so much for reading this story!