Summary: "Fingers gripping the console, River could feel herself falling apart. It had been easier to hold herself together when the Doctor was the one in pieces - so easy to just focus all her energy on him. But now he was looking at her with sad, ancient, knowing eyes that mirrored her own and it was just all too much. She had to get out of there before he saw right through her. She couldn't afford to fall to pieces. Not ever."
Notes: I found myself struck by this scene in that half-dreaming state of first awakening. This is what fell out. I make no apologies for musing on Doctor Who in my sleep. Title taken from the poem: "The angels have bowed down to you and drowned" by Farid ud-Din Attar, twelfth century.
Rated: K
The angels have bowed down to you and drowned
Fingers gripping the console, River could feel herself falling apart. It had been easier to hold herself together when the Doctor was the one in pieces - so easy to just focus all her energy on him. But now he was looking at her with sad, ancient, knowing eyes that mirrored her own and it was just all too much. She had to get out of there before he saw right through her. She couldn't afford to fall to pieces. Not ever.
With a few half-hearted attempts at levity that River could feel falling flat, even as they left her mouth, she made her escape into the depths of the TARDIS. Her corset was too tight. She kept her focus on heading to the closet. It was getting too hard to breathe.
Of course, as soon as she left the Doctor behind, the TARDIS was there, singing to her. With a sharp intake of breath, River recognized it as a Gallifreyan funeral dirge. Glaring at the walls, she pushed the song out of her mind, resolutely pushing forward. She would not break down in the middle of a bloody hallway.
A shower. That's what she needed. There was no point changing without one. Eyes filling up again, River chose a door at random and told the TARDIS in no uncertain terms that she expected one of the larger baths. She didn't want to go into their bedroom. She didn't want the Doctor to find her - not when she was like this.
By the time she managed to tug the lacings of her corset undone with shaking fingers, River was almost completely out of breath - choking in gasping, ragged lungfuls of air. River pulled her clothes off in a scattered heap, lunged for the taps, and climbed into the bath.
She stood under the hot water for several long moments, trying to steady her breathing and focus on all the work that still needed to be done. She had a book to write. She had to get the Doctor sorted. She had to track that bloody angel and blast it into so many tiny pieces it would be screaming for centuries. And seed some bank accounts wherever she found it. She had to find a way to tell Brian...
With a hiccoughing sob, River found herself sliding down into a tangled heap in the bathtub. The tears bursting out against her will - inexorably drawn out by the relentless cascade of water against her skin.
In the bowls of the TARDIS, curled into a ball on the floor of a bath that nobody ever used, shivering despite the heat of the shower, River cracked and fell to jagged, sodden pieces. The pain welled up around her with a uniquely sharp quality that stabbed and twisted and wriggled around into deep, aching wounds. Her parents - oh god - her parents were gone.
She didn't know how long she'd been there. The sounds of the TARDIS faded into the background. Time slunk away from her. Just River and water and pain. Sometimes she thought that was the story of her life. She was drowning again and she couldn't breathe and she couldn't move and it was all too much...
"River, oh my River," it was soft and choked and barely loud enough to be heard above the pounding of her hearts and water in her ears, but River could recognize her husband's voice anywhere. The Doctor was climbing into the bath after her, his arms sliding around her as he pulled her close, rocking her into his lap.
He was still in his tweed. His fringe was slicked over his eyes, and he was quickly getting soaked. River moved to pull away, some half-hearted joke about taking his clothes off dying on the tip of her tongue.
The Doctor just tightened his arms around her, hands running soothingly along the goose bumped flesh of her bare back while his lips pressed fleetingly against her brow. Soft, comforting gestures.
And the TARDIS had started up her song again, or maybe she had never stopped, but the low pained notes were clear over the whooshing rush in her ears. River pressed her head against the sodden tweed over the Doctor's left heart. The harsh rush of water swallowed her sobs and washed away every last trace of her tears.
The Doctor held her while she shook, folding her into him, burying his face against her hair, and tucking his knees up around them - as if the circle of his body could hold together all the broken pieces of her.
Clinging to one another, they mourned.