Dead love, by treason slain, lies stark,
White as a dead stark-stricken dove:
None that pass by him pause to mark
Dead love.
"I'm going mad," he whimpered to himself, clutching the rail in the TARDIS. The Doctor had never been one to consider himself unwell; troubled at times, yes, even dark, but it had never occurred to him that there was something wrong. As the pants his breathing was reduced to slowly shrank in size some part of him recognized he was hyperventilating, and if he was not careful, his respiratory bypass system would kick into action. The panting turned to strangled, unsuccessfully restrained sobs. "She's not there, I've just finally cracked, it was my fault..." A great hiccuping sob wrenched its way from his throat as he slipped to the ground. Maybe that was it. She had been the straw that broke the camel's back. River Song, his wife, the only other remotely Time Lord being in the cosmos, was dead and he couldn't save her properly. Some husband he was.
When he slowly came to standing up properly, she was standing across the console room. She shimmered slightly, like the image of her he had seen earlier in the night, and it was still just as painful. Never speaking, never moving, never acknowledging his existence. Stock still. Was she a holograph? Did the TARDIS do this on purpose? No, she wouldn't have, because she was hurting just as bad as he was. They always went where they were supposed to, she never caused him any extra trouble at all. If anything, she was subdued, or sullen. His ship reflected his mood, he supposed.
That night was riddled with nightmares and loneliness and tears.
xXx
He'd finally achieved a semblance of his life before. Clara was a brilliant woman- smart, cheeky, and she knew when to stay put. The only other person he could ever remember not wandering off was Brian. Rory's father had stayed in the TARDIS for two days without realizing it, watching those cubes. He was glad Clara had a firm grasp on the passing of time, even within the TARDIS.
It happened a month before their taxing ordeal at Trenzalore.
She noticed it nearly as soon as she bounded through the front doors. It wasn't large or flashy; that's not what caught her eye. "Doctor, this book looks like the outside of the TARDIS."
He jolted from the controls as if they had seared their shapes into his skin. "What?" His voice was barely above a whisper. It wasn't difficult to recognize the controlled fury.
Shrugging, she handed the little book to him. "You left it sitting on the console over there."
"I didn't-" His pause was abrupt, then it appeared as if he was looking at something in the far corner of the room. Clara couldn't see anything noteworthy there, but then again she wasn't a Time Lord. When he spoke again, his voice was soft. "Right. Clara, you have to promsie me that if you ever come across this book again, you do not touch it except to hand it to me."
"Why?" Her eyebrows rose. "Is it dangerous, that book?"
The Doctor contemplated for a moment. "At one point, this was the most dangerous book in the entire universe. Now it's just a diary. Just a memory." He studied her face with sad eyes. "It was Professor Song's diary."
"And this professor was a friend of yours?"
"Yes." He glanced toward the corner again. "You deserve to hear the story, but not now. Now I think we should work on the souffle."
Before steering Clara clear of the console room, he saw the hallucination of his dead wife shoot a small smile his way, as if she approved of promising the young woman to tell their love story.
xXx
"Doctor?"
"Clara."
"That book I found earlier, the one that looked like the TARDIS... Why was it the most dangerous book in the universe?" Her gaze never lifted above the mixing bowl.
The question froze the Doctor for a moment. How could he tell her the importance and power of River's diary? She wasn't asking for the story of River, and he wouldn't have told her just then if she had. A soft voice came from behind him, "You can tell her, it's alright." That nearly reduced him to tears. Seeing River every time he turned around was one thing, but now he was hallucinating her speaking to him.
"You remember our trip to the rings of Akhaten, yes?" Clara nodded. "This diary could have bought the entire system and then some. It's a recording of a life damaged beyond repair and ended too soon. Accounts of incredible pain, loss, love, precious family moments. There was a time when this diary could completely change the fate of the people who read it, but that time has passed. There's nothing in this diary that can be changed for any of those people anymore. Our fates have already been fulfilled."
"Our?" Clara asked. "Do you mean there's stories about you in there?"
The story was me, he thought morosely. "Me, Professor Song... and the professor's parents. They were my best friends, my family, the three of them. We are the people concealed among those pages."
The short girl nudged him with an elbow, leaving a streak of flour behind. "I can be your family, Doctor. I'm not saying I'm a replacement. I'm not sure I'll ever live up to the Songs. But I can be your family."
"Really?" She nodded, unaware that he was dipping his hands in the flour. "That means you won't mind this." He ran his flour-coated hands down the side of her face, much to her shock.
"Doctor!"
xXx
In time the appearance of his dead wife didn't faze him so dramatically. He glimpsed her everywhere they went, whether it was for a second and could have been someone else, or was most definitely her. It pulled at his hearts that he couldn't speak to her, couldn't touch her, and this was the solution his brain came up with. He could probably talk to these visions and they'd speak back, but it wouldn't be River. It would just be a figment of his imagination humoring his delusions. And it would hurt. Oh, it would hurt him so much. The first woman he'd truly loved since the loss of Rose, the only other Time Lord in the universe, dead because he existed. A childhood ruined because he existed. A life in prison because he'd wanted to stop "existing." No hope of a normal life.
If his brain was trying to make him feel guilty, it needn't have tried so hard.
xXx
They were back safe on the TARDIS, but Clara was still unconscious and clutching the leaf he had managed to return to her. She wasn't heavy, not to him, but that wasn't what was weighing him down. Even though he had saved Clara, he had lost River again. How many times did the universe think it was necessary to rip his wife away from him? She wasn't just a hallucination, that was her consciousness. He had understood exactly how she was mentally linked with Clara, but what he couldn't figure out was how he could always see her. He would've felt a mental link between them when she was alive. Wouldn't he have?
"Come on, old girl," he whispered to the TARDIS as he took Clara up the stairs. "Where's Clara's room?"
The first door on the left had her name inscribed into it, much like all the other companion's rooms had. Well, almost all of them.
River never had her own room. She always slept in his.
xXx
The Doctor had made sure to tuck the bear under her arm again, recalling how pleased she had been when she'd discovered it before. The childhood comforts of a present from her mother never failed. Satisfied with himself and accepting the fact that he should also get some sleep (maybe even a full night), he left the room.
And found himself face-to-face with his wife.
xXx
"I knew I wasn't rid of you just yet." He smiled gently, extending his hand towards her face, but not quite touching. "But how are you here?"
"Now you're willing to speak to me?"
"Yes," he answered in low tones. "Now I know you're real."
"She won't be able to see me. Not unless I reinitiate the link, which I won't do unless I have permission."
"Can I t-tou..." He bit his lip, attempting to keep the tears from welling in his eyes.
"Try it."
Hesitantly, with his eyes shut, he moved his hand the distance between them, and sighed in relief as his fingertips were met with cool flesh. "Oh, River. River." The tears he had been fighting slipped down his cheeks as he pulled her to him, much like he had in the dilapidated control room. Her lips were his heaven. "I love you, River. I know I should've said it before, but I thought you knew."
"I know. You never had to say it for me to know. And I love you too."
"But you've told me. I never... I'm an awful husband. I never once told you how much I love you." He kissed her again. "Tell me how we're linked."
"Marriage automatically creates one between Time Lords. The TARDIS creates one for the human companions, so my parents were linked, Martha and Mickey were, and so were Barbara and Ian. She told me. But I wasn't sure that the link would last since it was made in a version of reality that didn't exist. Do you remember the first time we made love?"
He smiled. "Of course I do."
"I made sure it stayed there, and of course the sex strengthened it." A tiny smirk played on her mouth when her husband turned pink. "That's why you've still been seeing me, I chose to come. Of course, it does help that I'm dead."
"Don't say it like that," he whispered.
"Why? I am."
"It's my fault that you're dead, and I couldn't do anything about it. I ruined your entire life." His head hung. "I can never save the people I love."
"Sweetie, I am saved," River laughed. "Don't you see what this means? You can touch me, you can talk to me, I can go wherever you want me to go. I can always be with you. But do you know what else will happen? When you die, I can pull a copy of your consciousness back into the Library with me. So we can be together until the end of the universe. Again, seeing as we already caused it once." She grabbed one of his hands and slowly led him back to their bedroom. "We can live a normal life in the computer. We'll be fine."
He pulled her to a stop for a minute. "All that time, I thought I was going mad, and you knew that. Why didn't you tell me I wasn't?"
This made her laugh. "Sweetie, would you really have believed a hallucination of your psychopath wife if she had told you you were sane?"
A/N: I wrote this because I reviewed Vilinye's Haunt Me, Then and got a PM back telling me try take a crack at the same idea. You should definitely go read that fic, because it was beautiful, and I took a different route towards the end. The poem used for the title is part of Algernon Charles Swinburne's Dead Love, which is a lovely little poem that symbolizes my vision of dark!Doctor quite well. (The first part of the story is not the whole poem! Just so you all know.) But, since my OTP is River/11, I gave them a fluffy little ending. :3