Another very short one, something I somewhat suspect. Suggestions are welcome, this needs something more and I can't think what.

.

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Don't play games with me, don't ever, ever think you're capable of that.

They think they're hiding it so well.

The Doctor knows, has known since walking back into that diner in Utah, that something had happened to his three companions. They'd been shocked to see him, that was clear, but shock and surprise are not the same. This was utter, heart-wrenching disbelief and confusion.

Their conversation below him tickles at the edge of his consciousness. He doesn't actively try to eavesdrop, and to be fair he only catches snippets of words and flashes of emotion, but it raises the hair on the back of his neck. Something is wrong here.

He is further convinced of some giant event when Amy steps forward to back River. Fish fingers and custard; he never could have imagined that strange combination born of a strange night would come to mean so much. And Amy was clearly torn; she needed him to cooperate, that was clear in her eyes, but just as clear was the wish for all of them to just run as far as they could and never look back.

It starts to become clearer as events progress around them. He has plenty of time to think, of course, chained to a hard plastic seat in a large empty room, wrapped in bonds that he could be out of in a heartbeat should he so choose. His mind rushes sixteen directions at once on a slow day, and these days are lightning.

River tells him he'll learn nothing from the postcard, but that's not entirely true; he already knows it must come from someone who not only knows them all, but can send simple postage through time and space, even to the point of tracking him down. And he knows he's hard to track, has made a point of it really.

The person who trusts him the most. That catches him up for a bit. There are so many people on so many world who trust him, or have trusted him, or will possibly someday trust him, but none of them would call across the ages to send him to a backwater planet in an uninteresting solar system. Even if they could. So who?

He starts to see the outlines. Who else could have sent it? But he knows, oh he knows so well, that mingling with ones own timeline carries threats, and knows that he wouldn't have risked it unless there was no option.

He knows he wouldn't have called upon himself unless it was the end.

It takes a single statement to confirm at least part of his conclusions.

"You only live once."

They don't notice him noticing them, but he does. And he knows they've seen him die. And if River was there, River the far too knowing, then there wasn't likely a mistake, not an illusion, not a regeneration gone wrong.

He supposes he should be angry, or afraid, or upset somehow, but his own death who knows how soon can wait while he solves the new riddle of Amelia Pond. And maybe that little girl. And maybe along the way he'll figure out why he had to die in front of the people he trusted the most in the universe. Maybe find a way past it.

Maybe. Maybe not.