Title: Predisposition
Author: Winter Ashby (rosweldrmr)
Disclaimer: Doctor Who © R. T. Davies
Rating: K
Summary: He wonders, sometimes, caught in the cage of River's arms – was he always going to love her? (The Doctor & River)
Timeline: Post 'Journey's End'.
Authors Notes: I'll admit, at first, I was all 'This River thing is ridiculous.' But after I gave it a little thought, I became more interested. I wanted to know how The Doctor could love someone enough to tell them his real name (a human no less). And I was struck with the notion that A.) it did happen, and there's no point in denying canon (because it's interesting and give The Doctor all new levels of angst) and B.) maybe he was able to love her and trust her so completely was because he knew he already had, and that it would have hundreds of people's lives. And I thought that probably appealed to him, being able to be completely honest and loving someone without ever having to worry about the aging thing was probably liberating. So this is just my attempt to show The Doctor's side of his brief relationship with River Song.

He wonders, sometimes, caught in the cage of River's arms – was he always going to love her

He wonders, sometimes, caught in the cage of River's arms, was he always going to love her? Or was it just easier to love her because he already knew he could?

Did knowing that he loved her, in the future, predispose him to love her when they finally did meet, on Elmantia, under a great molten sky of poisonous sulfur fumes?

He looked her up, not too long after Donna returned to the humble life of a mortal. Rose was gone, and Jack was gone, and his whole hodgepodge family was spread out across the stars and universes while he was left to wander alone. The oncoming storm with no thunder. The Destroyer of Worlds with no one to hold him back.

It is the first time he has ever knowingly sought-out someone he knows he will someday meet. Because the pain that the empty, echoing, silent TARDIS fills him with is almost too much this time. The weak part of him is finally ready to admit – he doesn't want to be alone anymore.

So he finds her, a few years before they will meet for the first time, extends his hand and asks, "Come with me?" with a bit more hope than he means to. And she inclines her head a little, her curls falling softly over her cheeks as she blushes and entwines her fingers with his.

He tells her about Donna, whom he misses and Rose, who he still loves, and she accepts this because she knows (somehow) that this is what it means to love The Doctor. And he tells her about Jack and Martha and so many others who lived parallel to him for fleeting moments in time.

But these stories of other people, other worlds, other lives gives rise to more questions. Would it have been so easy to forget the faces of all those he left behind if he didn't already know that he could, and that she would let him and love him for it?

Did knowing the middle spoil the beginning? He refusing to think of it as the end, the day he met her. It was just the middle, lost in a convoluted timeline splintered and fractured with the passing of words and songs.

And when he kisses her for the first time, he wonders: would he have still leaned in if he didn't already know that she'd let him?

He loves her, unequivocally. Because he knows how it ends for her. And he vowed, long ago, in a library made from the Vashta Nerada forest, that he would love her. So he does.

He marries her. And in the end, it's not so hard to love her. He loves her openly, unhindered by everything that's ever held him back before; because he knows from the start of this that it can't last forever.

It was the least he could give her – a short life of dangerous/adventurous/non-chronological love. And he would tell her everything right from the start (hers, not his) for once in his long, alien life – he would be forthcoming and open and vulnerable. Because she died for him. And she would do it again.

And he wonders, would she still have been in the library, would she still have died if he'd never known her, if he'd never corrupted her with his fleeting, candid love. (But the thought of this doesn't occur to him until much, much later.)

In between, he adds red levels and dampers to his screwdriver, that he knows will someday trap the essence of her. Because he knew all of it, can see it all laid out in front of him like a puzzle just waiting to be solved, before she introduced herself (the second time for him, first time for her).

This is a finite life he gives her. Each time they touch, or kiss, or whirl through spiraling galaxies, he knows their story is coming to an end. Like a clock counting down. And this, he comes to realize is what makes loving her so easy. He will never be faced with watching her grow old. He will never be confronted with having to leave her behind. So, for perhaps the first time, he treats her as an equal. He praises her genius, and marvels at her courage without the fear. (He already knows how it will end.)

When he says goodbye – the only way he knows how, (doing exactly what she told him so long ago that he did), he cries. Because it's just another life, another love, another wife in a long line of lives and loves and wives that he never reaches end of.

And after she's gone (he knows because he sits in the TARDIS and waits for the news of the 100 year-old mystery of the survivors of the Library) he thinks of Rose and the human version of himself and wishes, just this once, that he got to see the ending even though he knows he already has. But it's wrong, all backwards, that her last glimpse of him in this world is one of a stranger, someone who doesn't trust her or love her the way he does now. And the stranger is wearing his face.

Eventually though, he sputters on, rambling through space, no place to rest his head, no time to dwell on things that he couldn't have or wouldn't change. And just a piece of him still wonders, after she's gone – was it easier to love River, to marry her, to give her a lifetime of happiness, knowing that it would end? Was it easier to be with her knowing that it was only temporary?

Did it make what he shared with her any less true that if he'd never known?

He wonders still.