Disclaimer: Recognizable characters are not my own - I just borrow them.
Pairing: River/Twelve
Summary: "You have to wear the suit."
Rated: G
Notes: Written: 1/15/16-3/16/16. Fussed with ever since.
Thanks to Beverly for the support. All mistakes are my own.
With angsty hugs to Pam.
how to say goodbye
The first vestiges of dawn were starting to streak across the dark of Darillium, brightly colored rays that sent cold tendrils of dread down her spine. Despite their every effort, the night was ending right on time.
They'd had twenty-four become nearly two-hundred linear years together (so they cheated a bit - she wouldn't have expected anything less of them). Time to revel in their marriage and assuage their fears and run about the universe, diving headlong into danger like it wasn't the last time.
And it wouldn't be. The Doctor had promised her that Darillium was not the end for them, not by far. As if they could ever do anything as silly as end.
The Doctor's face tightened as he spotted the beginning dawn, and he hurried her back into the TARDIS for another adventure - just the two of them - outracing the sun.
But even they could not run forever, no matter how hard they always tried. They watched the towers bathed in the morning light from their reserved balcony, the Doctor's hand gripping hers fiercely.
The sick lurch of dread re-doubled its efforts. River swallowed, kept her face smooth with difficulty, and searched her husband's. "I'm not going to die, am I?" Somehow she'd been holding onto this foolish hope that it wasn't their last night - that the Doctor really would pull off some ridiculous, almost-impossible feat to fool the history books themselves. If this was it, she'd go peacefully - oh she'd fight to her last, she always would, but she'd accepted her death long ago.
He offered her his best grin and pulled her closer.
"Never."
She'd thought he was being hyperbolic or sentimental, ignoring the fact that this iteration of her husband was not prone to either. After an eternity in the Library mainframe (she'd spent at least three hundred years of it pointedly haunting him, after she'd hacked her way onto the TARDIS with a bit of help from her Mum), it was only too clear how serious he had been.
River had been all too eager to join the expedition to the Library upon her return to Luna, ready to reclaim her life and solve another fantastic mystery in the meantime. When the atmospheric sensors could not make heads or tails of whether the hundred-year sealed Library still had a breathable atmosphere, River felt the first trickle of apprehension, balking at the stark white suit that so resembled one she'd rather forget but never could.
"You have to wear the suit." The Doctor began, apropos of nothing.
"What suit?"
He ignored her question, flashing up his psychic paper and pinning her under his most serious face instead, eyebrows drawn. "You won't be alone. I always come when you call."
Cursing her husband all the while, River stepped into the suit, tucking the psychic paper in one of its many utility pockets and telling herself she wouldn't need it.
When the Doctor's younger face, flushed and lit from running, blinked up at her from the paneled library walls, River laughed and teased him and thought everything would be running as usual.
Right up until the moment that he didn't recognize her and she saw, deep in those ancient eyes, that this really was the end. The pain of that was both sharp and expected, despite all their time together. It took all her energy to hide it as they ran from the Vashta Nerada and she watched her crew being eaten one by one, while her husband looked at her through the eyes of a stranger, determined to peek ahead and solve the mystery of her - as though anything were ever that simple.
Still, River reveled in the familiarity of running with the Doctor's hand in hers, and it didn't even occur to her that they might ever stop. The Doctor had promised her, many times over the long years - he had a plan and Darillium was not their last night.
He kissed her like it was goodbye, clutching her tightly to him, hands buried, trembling, in her coat.
When River looked up, his face was dark and shadowed even in the brilliant light of the sunrise. "The sun has risen, Doctor."
"So it has," he released her with infinite care, as though one of them were fragile and breakable.
River blinked back a sudden rush of tears, of long soothed fears. In the morning light it was a whole new day and anything was possible. "Well then, good morning, sweetie."
"Up with the dawn and already rushing off to work, I see how it is," the Doctor grumbled, straightening and shoving his hands in his pockets. "You know it's still a holiday - we could stay for Boxing Day. What do you say? One more night?"
River brushed another kiss against his hopeful lips. "Just twenty-four more years?"
He grinned at her, a half-shrug. "Something like that."
"Next time," she promised, snapping her fingers and walking him backwards into the TARDIS. "Time to get back to the rest of the universe, just for a little while."
"Just for a little while." She could feel his eyes trailing her as they drove but when she looked up he'd turned away.
"Well then," she offered a too bright smile to mask the lurching uncertainty, making her way toward the door. He'd promised. This was not the end. "'Till the next time, Doctor."
"See you around, Professor River Song."
She believed it, too, until she looked into those familiar-alien eyes and saw that he didn't. That he was going to sacrifice himself and erase their entire history - his future - because there really was no way out.
It was easier than she'd have liked to knock him out in that moment.
Rule 1: The Doctor Lies.
And River had her part to play - the part she'd always been meant to. Killing him and saving him had always been one and the same for her, but River had never doubted that she'd give all of her lives for his - for theirs.
She wired an interface to the Library core, sending out a last message on her psychic paper that she now realized she'd always sent - to this younger version of her husband, unknowingly coming exactly as she had called him.
She soothed his anguish, knowing he'd never truly understand his own loss, and prepared to make herself an organ donor with no regrets. He was worth it - always and completely.
But for just a moment, when she first awoke in the Library, River thought that maybe he'd managed it after all. Just at the very last moment when all hope was lost. Only she hadn't lost all hope, not really.
It took far too long for River to lose the last of her faith in the Doctor.
Far too many aimless years as little more than computer coding, cut off from time and the universe and her husband - the three things she'd always taken for granted as eternal.
And yet, she went on. And on and on and on.
River was a voracious and prolific reader - even the largest Library in the universe got boring fast.
Haunting her husband at first felt like freedom but quickly dissolved into the same stabbing pain as when he'd not known her. Only now he couldn't even see her. They were both miserable, and River had never been content to be miserable alone. She haunted him with vicious abandon - mocking his lack of plans, encouraging the monsters, expounding on the failings of his companions. It wasn't fair, but then River had never been accused of being fair, and she wasn't above doing nearly anything if only he would notice her.
At least, haunting him, she had the universe back. Somehow, it seemed paltry compensation without time thrumming under her skin and the Doctor's hand in hers.
It was cruel of him.
Crueler than she'd ever imagined he could be, and River had a vivid imagination, full of his deepest and darkest secrets. He'd preserved her for eternity, enshrined her in a monument of a planet - we're all stories in the end - without once visiting her. She was there to assuage his guilt at the idea of her death, but he didn't even love her enough to face her as she was now - as he had made her - dead, but never gone.
Of course, the stark clarity that he'd never really loved her - not beyond those suddenly brief, stolen moments where he'd pretended to be a man instead of a god - didn't change anything.
She still loved him, even when she hated him. She always had done.
When Vastra summoned her unknowingly to the Doctor's grave, how could she not go? How could she not haunt him one last time? How could she not sacrifice the last piece of her to save him?
Only there was nothing left of her but computer lines and magic tricks. She was no longer the complicated time-space event that could be sacrificed in his stead. Unwilling to watch him die in front of her for the third time, the final time, River did the only thing she could - demanded that he not die.
"There has to be another way. Use the TARDIS, use something. Save her, yes. But for God's sake, be sensible!" She went to slap him then, as she would have done if she were still alive, only he caught her wrist in one large, firm hand. Touching her for what felt like the first time in an eternity. "How are you even doing that? I'm not really here."
"You're always here to me. And I always listen. And I can always see you."
"Then why didn't you speak to me?"
"Because I thought it would hurt too much."
They were close - so close after so long apart. She could feel the warmth of his skin and see the tears building behind his eyes. "I believe I could have coped."
"No. I thought it would hurt me. And I was right."
He took her head in his hands, cradling her like she was something precious, and kissed her. It felt like the first time all over again - though he was less flustered by far - it had been so long. It felt like her world slotting back into place - time and the universe and the Doctor, with her, right where they belonged.
When they let their lips just barely part on a sigh, eyes wet, the Doctor pasted on one of his jovial smiles - wobbly and wet at the edges. "Since nobody else in this room can see you, god knows how that looked." He paused and she indulged him with a smile, even though his tears made the joke fall flat. "There is a time to live and a time to sleep. You are an echo, River. Like Clara, like all of this. In the end, my fault, I know. But you should have faded by now."
"It's hard to leave when you haven't said goodbye."
"Then tell me, because I don't know. How do I say it?" He was begging her, more clearly than if he'd said the words. Her husband again, and she could see him so clearly - see exactly the way he could not bear to part with her.
She forgave him in that moment, even though she thought she'd forgotten how. "There's only one way I would accept. If you ever loved me, say it like you're going to come back."
It took him longer than either of them would ever admit to steady his voice and smile. To build up the armor they both lived their lives behind. "Well then. See you around, Professor River Song."
River smiled, even though tears trekked down her coded cheeks, reminded of the longest of nights still to come. "Till the next time, Doctor."
"Don't wait up." And there he was, her husband, flirting right until the end.
Only it wasn't the end - not for him. "Oh, there's one more thing."
"Isn't there always?"
"I was mentally linked with Clara. If she's really dead then how can I still be here?"
"Okay - how?"
"Spoilers. Goodbye, sweetie." She watched his eyes light up as she closed hers, surrendering to sweet oblivion at last.
When she opened them again, there he was, standing with his hands in his pockets, looking smug. "Hello, sweetie."
"That's my line," River managed, feeling slightly faint and disorientated, weighted down by a physical body that didn't quite seem to remember how to breathe.
"Not goodbye?"
He was teasing her but she could see the concern in his eyes as he quickly hurried to her side, one hand at her pulse and the other steadying at her waist.
"Oh, shut up," River managed, wheezing only slightly between the words and leaning heavily into him.
"Not a chance. You weren't really going to give up so easily, were you, Professor Song? You've picked up a nasty habit of sacrificing yourself for me. I don't like it." He helped her to sit, ironically enough in his mini-Library.
River would have laughed if she were certain she could just catch her breath first.
The Doctor's voice was steady and calm, but the rapid stream of conversation betrayed his nerves. He was trying to distract the both of them.
River levelled him with a glare. "You promised I wouldn't die."
He couldn't quite meet her eyes, fiddling with his sonic. "You didn't."
"We both know what dying feels like. Trust me, Doctor, I died."
"Well, technically, you were in a type of suspended animation after... burning up your last body." He sighed, heavily, gesturing with his hands as he tried to explain. "There was no other choice, River. I wouldn't have made it through Trenzalore without you by my side. You didn't stay in the Library mainframe, so I couldn't pull you out until you'd stopped bloody haunting me."
It was too much. Hello and goodbye and hello again all at once.
She caught his hand in hers and held him still from where he was fussing with scanning her, checking on her. Brought him around to face her. "Oh, I hate you."
"No you don't."
"But you will. You'll wait until I've given up hope. All will be lost, and you'll do that smug little smile and then you'll save the day. You always do."
- River Song, The Husbands of River Song