I'll see you in the future when we're older
He trudged along the crimson sand, following the archeology expedition as they led Clara along the sandy wonders of the Sahara. But his thoughts were not on the oceans of rust, but on the group leading his newest inquisitive companion across the natural beauty. The archeology team minus the one crucial member. His wife. The last Pond. River Song.
After he dropped her off at the Library, he wept. Abandoning all previous engagements, he left life behind to sit in the corner of the universe and wept. When the tears no longer fell, he collected Clara and showed her the stars. She was a distraction, if nothing else, a friend an puzzle for him to decipher. But she was not his River.
In a desperate attempt to dangerously cross their timelines and see her once again, he began his association with archeologists. Of course, he never found her: for the universe would not concur, not grant him his one remaining wish. For saving so many, for loving so much, for showing such compassion he had hoped that fate would grant his request: to see his wife once more. But it was not meant to be.
The association with the archeologists continued as Clara made numerous friends amongst the hoards of people they met. He began to enjoy the time spent with them, laughing at their stupidity and correcting their mistakes. The grief clutched his heart in its death-grip, nevertheless, throwing him into an unfathomable abyss of depression as soon as he let his guard down. He managed to keep his head up, his smile stuck on his face and his arms flailing enthusiastically whenever Clara was with him.
And the times she wasn't? Well, he let the emotions overwhelm him, forcing him into a soul-destroying spiral of misery. He wept, he sobbed, he pleaded with the universe to save his wife, to change her fate and to consequently save him.
After Trenzalore, it only got worse. He knew the pain of seeing her, understood the risks, and was convinced that he must be hallucinating. Weeks, months, years, decades of catching glimpses of her during those especially horrendous times, convinced she was noting more than a figment of his imagination. To acknowledge her existence? To acknowledge her presence? His hearts would break, his soul severing in two, casting him further into himself, into the shell of the man whom the glorious Ponds knew.
So he had retreated back to the archeologists, his own personal form of torture for all the heinous crimes, the deaths he is responsible for, hers included. And here he was, back in the Sahara, a place he remembered with the familiar pangs of depressing nostalgia. The running through the dunes with her by his side, a tail of aggressive Sontarans chasing them at gunpoint. The picnic rug laid across the floor after "saving the day" once again and the congratulatory sex with had become the custom after a hard day's work saving one planet or other.
"Doctor?" Came the voice of his new companion, breaking through his hazy nostalgia.
"Clara?"
"Have you seen this? Look, they've found something new! Say you'll like it?"
He trudged over to the team and Clara, huddled together over the examination table, ready to vanquish there hopes and prove that it was in fact just a rock (please not again).
As he approved the table, the crowd around it parted around him and he caught an unmistakable flash of blue. No, no, it can't be. Can it? Is it?
The diary lay in all it's TARDIS blue glory, full of the memories of all their times together. Of course he could never bring himself to return to the Library and take back the diary, and now it lay before him, taunting him with the sheer clarity of the written word.
"Doctor? Why are you crying?"
A flock of archeologists and Clara crowded around him, petting him affectionately and offering him tissues.
Clara stood behind the Doctor and came to the inevitable conclusion as to the diaries' previous owner: she had, after all, only seen him cry like this once before.
"Doctor? Is it hers? River? River Song?"
"Oh, Clara. My dear, impossible Clara. Yes, this is River's diary. Our tragedy, immortalised in this one single book. It was a gift, the first material gift I gave her: of course setting her free from her lifelong purpose comes first and foremost in terms of the best gift I gave her, but this diary holds all of that. Every day I ever spent with her, and let me tell you, there were a fair few, spanning centuries, remote corners of the planets, the edges of the universe, oh you watch us run!"
A single tear dropped from the corner of the Doctor's eye, and Clara watched as it made it's steady progress along his mountainous chin and splashed into the puddle in the desert at his feet.
"You really loved her, didn't you?" She asked, laying a hand on his arm.
"She is all I ever think about." He confessed, reaching for the diary with a sad smile.
"She and I were the last of our kind. She was the only one in the universe compatible with me, both emotionally and biologically. Oh River, my River" he whispered to the book, clutching it to his chest.
DWDWDWDWDWDWDWDWDWDW
Later that night, once Clara was safely asleep in her room in the TARDIS, the Doctor steeled his emotions and retreated to their bedroom, diary in hand, and prepared himself for the torture which would follow reading their story back.
Leafing from page to page and reading all of the comments River had made about him, about Clara, about the Ponds, about them, the tears rolled freely onto the TARDIS blue bed sheets. The room in itself was resplendent with memories: the photo montage on that wall from the last family picnic to the lost moon of Poosh before manhattan, the collection of artwork of the two of them on various honeymoon, and if he strained his eyes past the constant stream of tears, he could almost make out the hazy outline of the portrait of her that he had drawn in the en suite bathroom one gloriously domestic night. And now all that was gone.
He read through countless battles, through Berlin and Lake Silencio, Demons Run and the Big Bang Two, and remembered. He remembered the way her eyes would crinkle at the edges when she smiled at him after defeating countless races and saving infinite galaxies. He remembered the purse in her lip which became present when he exasperated her more than usual. He remembered the constant sparkle in her eye, regardless of her hellish past and tragic future, the spark which had caught his attention in the library and seared itself onto his hearts through all of time and space. He remembered the soft curve of her hips, the way he would run his fingers and tongue over her late at night, the frenzied screaming he would elicit from her once he'd figured out what he was doing.
He remembered simultaneously, but brokenly; in jolts, but fluid, and the rush of emotions broke an already fragile man. He read the finally few pages in a stupor: unwilling to continue, but unable to stop. Her heartbreak at his young and unknowing face, her insistence and reasoning for dying in his place and, taped to the very end, her final farewell. In their remote corner of the TARDIS, the Doctor read his wife's final goodbye, and felt for the first time in over a hundred years since he left her at Darillium a spark of hope.
"My dearest Doctor,
If you are reading this now, I can only assume that the worst has happened. And yet, the thing that strikes me most is you having to live our life, see me everyday and know how it was going to end. You knew I was coming here, and you've always known. But I don't blame you, and you are forgiven. Always and completely forgiven.
I love you, Doctor. I know you've certainly heard those words from a fair few people, but my dying wish is that I will have left enough of an impact on your life for you to believe me.
What you must do now, Doctor, is not retreat into the shadows. Mourn me, of course, and all I hope is that my death is far enough away from manhattan for you to have regained some strength. Go to Jenny, Vastra and Strax, they will look after you. Let them look after you! You need somebody once I'm gone, and keep an eye on Clara: there's more to her than you or I will ever know.
The universe needs you, my love, and I need you. Even in death I am impossibly selfish, and as such ask you to remember me, to remember us, and to not hide from all our memories. Now that I am gone, I only live on in your memory. Keep me alive in the only way you can, Doctor.
And Doctor. My darling, impossible husband, remember this: the woman in black can revive the song.
I love you, always and completely, eternally and irrevocably,
River xx"
The woman in black can revive the song? What does that mean? Even in death, his fantastically complex wife managed to infuriate him with her cryptic remarks. Revive the song: could that mean what he thought? Was there a way to bring her back to him? Was there a way he could see her? But who is this woman in black?
He lay back into the tangle of silken sheets speckled with his tears and got his first night's sleep since he left her at the library and dreamed of her, of that sporadic mop of curls bouncing on her back, of her sleep-heavy voice and the warmth of her back pressed to his during a fight.
DWDWDWDWDWDWDWDWDWDW
He had dropped Clara back home for the week and was running around Victorian London trying frantically to prevent the end of the world. River's letter pushed to the very back of his mind as he ran around after a particularly nasty alien attempting to assassinate Queen Victoria herself. As he sprinted along the lengths of Buckingham Palace, the caption of a painting on the never-ending corridor caught his eye. Normally he avoided all interactions with art and artists, what with the wounds from manhattan still raw and of course the memory of the Library consistently threatening to drown him in sorrow, but this particular piece caught his eye.
The painting showed a lone figure, a woman, walking along a beach, black umbrella in hand and lacy veil over her face. But it wasn't the picture which fascinated him. It was the caption. Embossed onto a golden plaque was the title: "The Woman in Black."
The world appeared to tilt and bounce, and the Doctor struggled to keep his balance amidst the constant spinning in his head. Dazed and disorientated, he staggered closer and peered at the painting which could hold the answers he was so desperately searching for.
A loud clanging from down the hall reminded him where he was, and more importantly why he was there, and he disappeared down the corridor to finish what he had started. It was only once he was back on the TARDIS that he could do something about the painting.
He searched through the TARDIS databases and easily found the painting and the artist. Gallivanting around the console at a million miles an hour, he shot through the centuries to the original time and location the artist created the masterpiece: a dreary beach in the North of Scotland in the year 1812. Good year, 1812. Lots of wars, various invasions, an incredible amount of sex on yet another honeymoon, but a good year overall.
The woman's and the artist's backs were to him, but the crunch of shingle beneath his boots alerted the two of them to his arrival. He came up behind the artist to look closer at his work and said:
"Nice painting. Maybe need to work on the shadowing a bit, little bit chalky in places, but what do I know! I'm the Doctor, just the Doctor, and it's an honour to meet you Mr?"
"Mr Renfrew. I've heard about you, or perhaps your grandfather? In artist's circles, you're best known for influencing Van Gogh himself!"
"Ahh, yes. Well, that was a fun day! Do you mind if I speak to your model?"
"Of course not-just be careful," he lowered his voice "she's rather temperamental to say the least, and has a weapon which shoots fire!"
"Ohh, a fire-shooting moody woman in black? I like her already!"
The Doctor left Renfrew with his easel and made his way towards the woman. He didn't normally notice such human things, at least not since River, so was surprised to find himself admiring the graceful curves of the woman's spine into her full behind and the wonders the tight dress did to accentuate her cleavage.
"Excuse me, ma'am, but I was sent by a good friend of mine who says you have something I want. Are you the woman in black?"
"Sweetie, please," the woman replied, drawing back her veil, "is that all I am to you? A good friend?"
"River?"
"That would be me, my dear!"
"But how? Why? When? How are you alive? You died! I watched you die! You were dead!"
"Oh, my dear, you only wish you could get rid of me that easily!"
"But how? Oh, come here!" The Doctor pulled her into his arms and ran his fingers along the familiar curves of her skin and drew her lips to his. Kissing her gently, he relished the thought that was his reality: his wife was alive! He didn't know how, he didn't know why, but she was alive, and that's all that mattered to him.
DWDWDWDWDWDWDWDWDWDW
It was not until later that night as she lay, spent and exhausted on his chest, their breathing in perfect synchronisation that he asked her again.
"River?"
"Mhm?"
"How did you get out of the Library alive?"
She pulled herself up to a sitting position with great effort and started playing with his floppy mop of hair.
"Clara. That's all I can say. You don't deserve such an amazing companion! Rather than have me die, she traded places with me at the last minute, at that flash of light, and gave her life so we could be together. And do you know why? There's something we haven't told you."
"What is it?" He asked, hearts swelling in gratitude for his impossible girl.
"She's our daughter."