Author's Notes: Again, really intense to write, but it tends to happen when I write for them, apparently.
References:The song used is Rest Calm by Nightwish. The books the Doctor thinks about is City of Lost Souls and the 'This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper' quite is from the Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot.
P.S.: I highly recommend listening to Mistake by Moby while reading it, because somehow it fits perfectly.
Within there's every little memory resting calm in me
Resting in a dream, smiling back at me
The faces of the past keep calling me to come back home
To caress the river with awe
During his long years in exile on Trenzalore, the Doctor found himself haunted by quite a few ghost of his past and while most of them were just in his head while he led countless discussions of 'What would _ say about this?" with himself.
River haunted him more often than everyone else put together and he wasn't sure if she was another figment of his imagination or if he actually had the power to summon her with the mental link they had established once, so long ago. He always saw her in the same white dress, unchanging and perfect as she had always been while he grew older and angrier and lonelier by the day.
No one else could see her, of course, and as time passed, the people from the town Christmas stopped questioning the conversations he sometimes had seemingly with himself, and left him on his own in the room when he asked for it They got used to him and his invisible wife and she became as much of a myth as most of the stories about him were.
"How does it work?" He asked her one night as she sat next to him on the grass in front of the house. "How can you be here?"
"I have a– connection of sorts, with the outside world," River said, evasive as ever. "Not enough to get out for good, but enough to appear every once on a while." She ran a hand through his hair and the Doctor leaned into the touch.
"I'm sorry," he said, voice quiet and broken. "I shouldn't have done that. I know that being trapped is much worse than death for you."
"Sometimes it is," she admitted – not blaming him, just stating the fact. "Dull, maybe. Nothing changes and nothing ever happens, but I can live with that." River gave a short laugh at her own joke. "Like I could live in any other way, really."
Her words felt like a punch in the gut and he closed his eyes against the tears that threatened to fall. He didn't want to cry. He had no right; not when compared to River.
"I know that it seems hopeless now, but isn't it always like that at the beginning?"
"The beginning?" The Doctor interrupted. "I've been here for a century!"
River ignored him and her hands dropped to his neck, massaging it gently. "You'll get through this. It will be hard – I'm not saying that it won't – but you will."
"I'm not sure it's possible," he said and suddenly all the weariness he'd been holding back fell on him all at once. "Not anymore. I'm too tired to fight any longer."
"No, you're not," River retorted firmly, her eyes locked on one of the stars above them and the Doctor briefly wondered if she longed to be back there, amongst the planets and stars and everything, which was exactly where she belonged. "You need to keep going. For these people if for nothing else."
He looked at her and once again, her beauty almost blinded him. The honey-like hair, the green-blue eyes and the soft skin and she was staring at him like no one had done ever before. Not with love or hate or anger or any emotion at all, but just in the way she always had – straight at his soul, seeing through all the pretence and the layers of masks he'd acquired for the thousands different people he'd met in his life.
"Kiss me," he murmured at last, almost desperately. "I– Please. I need– I need you." He had always needed her, really, but he was too exhausted to keep pretending that he could keep going without her help.
River – always knowing, always understanding what even he couldn't manage – leaned in and their lips collided, soft and gentle and furious all at the same time, and he felt himself breaking, his whole being shattered to pieces with the sheer power of it all.
"I love you," he said breathlessly as his chest pressed against hers and his hands started the familiar journey down her back as her teeth nipped at his lower lip and her fingers buried themselves in his hair. "And I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I love you." And he did; he loved her so much that it hurt because it was the first love that had been so strong that he felt ready to commit anything for it – for her – and it scared the hell out of him. The kind of love that can burn down the world or raise it up in glory. He'd seen that once in a book and he wasn't sure which one applied to them. Maybe both. They had danced through time and space, had given the start of legends that would go for millions of years until the both of them were nothing but myths and dust. "River–"
And in the next moment, he was alone again, opening his eyes and staring in disbelief around himself, wondering if he had finally went mad and if she had been here at all – if she had ever been here – only to find her perfume (lilac, lilies and thyme, the combination she'd told him she loved 'since Paris' and he had never really know what that meant, even though he was pretty sure it had something to do with her childhood) still lingering in the air where she had been seconds ago.
You are the moon pulling my black waters
You are the land in my dark closet
Stay by my side until it all goes dark forever
When silent the Silence comes closer
The Doctor was kneeling on the ground, his shirt drenched in the same blood that was dripping off his fingertips. He looked down at the lifeless body of the creature he'd just killed while trying to protect one of the children in Christmas that had been attacked.
They were all trying to get to him, of course; the Doctor was not a fool. Every attack on Trenzalore, be it through the children of this planet, with force or blackmail, was somebody's attempt to get to him.
This was the first murder he'd ever committed. Yes, he had triggered a genocide not once or twice, he had watched and allowed other people to kill, but he had never killed anyone with his bare hands. The creature's blood stained him from head to toe, inside and out. His hair was dishevelled and his eyes wide and terrified as he tried to take in the fact that he had just killed somebody when he felt her presence behind him, uncharacteristically quiet.
"How long have you been here?" She asked and every word was filled with unspeakable pain.
"Two hundred years." His voice was hoarse, unaccustomed to speech. He hadn't talked to anyone in so long. "Nearly two hundred."
"You still have a long way to go and you'll have to be strong," River continued. "I'm sorry, I really am, but you'll have to keep going for quite some time."
"How would you know that?" The Doctor wasn't sure why bothered to ask any longer; after all, she had always known everything, even if it made no sense. Especially then, really.
"I can't tell you now, but you have to be patient."
"This is the way the world ends," he said quietly and looked up at her, wondering what she was seeing. If she could look right through him once again and if she could see him for what he really was – desperate and half mad, eyes pleading and adoring her like they always had. "Not with a bang but a whimper."
River shook her head. "No. Never that. Never you."
"And never you, right?" His voice was deeper now, full of helpless anger and sorrow. Now that all the cards were on the table, they had nothing to hide from each other. "You had to go out with a bang."
"The world doesn't end with me."
"Funny, because that's what it feels like from here." The Doctor looked up, eyes meeting hers as the blood kept running down his hands, the tears he had tried to hold back falling down his cheeks. "I am what you made me."
River smiled down at him, looking for all the world like an angel; like the only light in a Universe where everything had ceased to exist. "Likewise, my love."
And that was when he knew that he was ready to die.