Doctor Who:Fear of the Known
by: domina tempore (formerly "jewel of athos")
Disclaimer: Doctor Who and all of its characters and locations etc. belong to their respective owners; I'm just borrowing. No copyright infringement intended.
Summary: He doesn't fear the unknown in River Song…but he is very afraid.
Author's Note: I wrote this one specifically for Eleven, but I think it holds true for all of the New Who Doctors, at least… It's certainly something that I identify very deeply with.
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Everybody thought that the Doctor was afraid of River Song.
He knew it, in a way; whenever he turned his back he could feel their curious looks, pitying and amused in turn. They all thought that they knew him so well, that they understood what it was that drove him and repelled him. Even Amy seemed to fancy herself so sure of their relationship. In fact, everyone seemed to think that they knew more about his feelings than he did himself. (The only one who hadn't misjudged was Donna; she had understood because she had reason to fear her, too. But Donna was gone now.)
He had considered asking people, once upon a time, what he had done to make them think that he was afraid. For his part, he was fairly certain that he had never acted any more than vaguely annoyed or confused around the woman; he'd said or done nothing near witnesses to reveal himself as clearly as they all seemed to think that he had. But in the end, he never asked. (And what good would it do, anyways? To deny it wouldn't change a thing.) He let them think what they liked, and he closed himself off a little more securely each time, determined never to give a hint of his true feelings.
They were wrong, anyways; all of them. (And why would they be right? Nobody really knew him.) They assumed that he ran and was afraid because River was "as good" as him, or because she didn't live in awe of him like so many others did. They assumed he was afraid to let any of the fractured strands of power that he still managed to grasp slip away. Amy thought that he was simply afraid of commitment, afraid to get married. (He'd never told her that he had been married on Gallifrey, with children and grandchildren. He'd never told her about Jenny.) River herself didn't even understand; she thought that he feared her because he didn't understand her.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. What was his life but the unknown, but commitment, but a constant surrendering of himself? (He may have feared these things, but he never ran from them. Not the Doctor.) None of that applied to River especially, any more than those same things applied to any of the rest of the universe. Those things were his life. (He ran through them, not from them.) No, the unknown was not what frightened him about River Song. (He could still fight the unknown. He could come to understand it.)
That she knew him was what terrified him.
fin.
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A/N: I would have liked to go farther with this than I did, but everything else I tried came out sounding forced. But…yeah this one is as much a part of me as of him. I don't like to be known TOO well… *shrug*