Had a completely different fic I wanted to post as a sort of anniversary fic. July 24th 2014 was when I posted How to Blush a Time Lord, my first dw fic. Sadly life happened and I not only am still working on the fic I wanted to post, but I missed the 24th. Such is life.
Anyway, at the encouragement of my lovely beta. I am starting this instead, and a little late. A collection of scenes, letters, etc that not only relate to the version of River & Eleven from Echoes of Pain; Shadows of Love, but add depth to their story from before it.
Not everything I plan to write or want to, will fit in that story but I loathe giving those 'deleted scenes' up. I do hope its all enjoyed.
This first story connects with the Doctors (grieving) memories, feelings, thoughts in chapters One, Two, Four, Six, Seven, and future chapters.
Takes place between losing River completely and meeting Clara.
Thought you were beside me
But I reached and you were gone
Sometimes I hear you calling
From some lost and distant shore
I hear you crying softly for the way it was before
- Hymn For The Missing, Red
It Wanders Lost and Wounded, This Heart That I Misplaced
It loomed, a gigantic reminder, teasing and tormenting him. It sat on the console, tucked half under knobs.
He ignored it. Just the same way he once spent ages pretending that Rose's favorite mug didn't sit on the shelf in the kitchen. Every time he went to get a cup of tea he told himself it was just a mug, old and chipped, bought at discount on the spur of the moment. Nothing of importance.
No meaning, not a reminder of the one that once held it. Nope, not at all.
But periodically, for months, he would find it in his hand. He would feel the cold porcelain through his palms, trace the jagged edge of the chipped side. Strange comforts. Needed comforts.
Hypnotized, he wouldn't notice the scream of the kettle either, not until Martha would wander in and he'd slip into a false casual stance and place the mug back. Or worse, he'd become aware of his actions through thoughts of what it would be like to heave it against the wall, watch it shatter, raining down a million pieces.
Perhaps if he did, it would all just stop: the guilt, the ache of missing her, the need to see her smile, hear her laughter or feel her hand in his. It was only ever a notion, a half thought, because each time he had it and the mug would shift ever so slightly in his hand, a realization would take it's place. The mug was one of the few things he had left of her.
Without them she was gone.
One night, after the agony of losing Rose a second time and then Donna, he finally packed up every last trace and put it in the remembrance room. He closed the door and made himself move on, let them finally go. Let his hearts begin to heal.
Doing so again, with River, was proving to be hard, if not impossible. Years had turned into several decades and he was still walking by her diary and pretending. Mostly that it wasn't there but sometimes he let himself pretend she was coming back for it, desperately adding bits of kindle to a dying ember.
If that wasn't enough self torture, there was her fantasm. It wasn't enough to suffer with memories of her, memories so vivid and bright, like a thousand suns. Terribly strong and sharp, shaped into daggers that endlessly pierced at his hearts. No, that was no where near enough; she had to haunt him as well.
He figured her ghost was a figment of his grief, but in the off chance she was real, he didn't want to risk believing otherwise. It was her, had to be, and though he suffered it meant she was there, a piece of her with him.
Of course he never responded, mostly.
"You could help him you know. Would be easy. "
He ignored her. Kept on walking, pretending he didn't notice what was about to happen. Calamity, not fatal but life changing, and he didn't care. He was just an oblivious visitor of an old mining outpost, far from anything that mattered. There was no beauty to enjoy, absolutely no adventures (he ignored them), and no one he cared about.
Just as he preferred.
But she walked beside him. Pointing out the possibilities and scratching at his already damaged heart's.
"Not too late to go back. You've been a medic, a war doctor. You could help."
He wanted to snarl at her, tell her to leave him alone, but then she might, leaving him to walk completely on his own. Stepping into the TARDIS, the Doctor quickly set about finding somewhere else to spend in his retirement.
"You can run but it never works. You can be angry but it helps nothing. " The ghost of his wife scowled at him from where she leaned against the console just as he opened the doors to find himself in 21st century London. The very last time and place he wanted to be.
The TARDIS rebellion gave him the excuse to express himself to her, to snap out and seem he was only telling off the old girl. "I'm RETIRED! It means I don't pick up shop girls and med students, or save little girls. I do NOT stop and help! "
He purposely avoided even a glance at her face, slammed the door, and stormed to his old den. He hadn't touched it in decades. But here there weren't many memories of her, of any of them.
"She looks so much like Amelia. You should say hello, it would do you good. "
He obstinately didn't look at the child. But the brief glimpse before had him agreeing. His hearts ached at the thought of his Amelia Pond. He missed her too.
River, when he stole a glance at her, seemed content to let him be for the moment. She had slipped off her sandals and dipped her feet in the fountain, leaned back to catch the sun. He was sweating buckets, but didn't dare take off his jacket. He learned from experience it made him approachable. The last thing he wanted was for anyone but her to talk to him.
As it was she managed to chatter away till she put him into distraction. He never intended to end up at the spring fest on Cordiac V. It was too happy and busy, too full of life, not his sorta place. Yet there he was, sitting at a fountain in the sun with a breeze catching the curls of his wife's ghost and reminding him of how those curls felt between his fingers.
He looked away in pain and just incase staring at her caused her to dissipate.
The children caught his attention. Playing around a group of thin, tall branches reminiscent of may poles, wrapping flower garlands in and around the grouping. There seemed to be some sort of game involved, one that in another time he'd have joined in to learn the rules. There was so much laughter. It crowded the air and felt like smog against his chest.
The Amelia like girl swam in an out of his line of sight as he watched them. Red hair trailing behind her, green eyes and a light smattering of freckles, even her facial shape reminded him. With a deep sigh, he wasn't sure whether to stay or leave.
"It's okay to mourn, to cry Doctor. You'll never move on till you do. "
He turned away from her and the children, focusing his attention on the rest of the myriad of activities going on further beyond the little square they were in. He had cried enough to last a life time. There was no more tears left to shed and no place to 'move on' to.
Warm breath tickled his ear and he could feel her sitting next to him. "I don't need a mind reading ability to know you think about them. About them all. You're lonely sweetie and you hurt -"
"I'm not-"
The Doctor nearly shouted, startling himself and the woman who had just approached the fountain for a rest. At the alarmed expression on her face he mustered a smile and repeated more calmly, "I'm not staying... It's all yours."
Leaving the fountain and heading for the TARDIS, he told himself he had been talking to that woman in the first place. If he believed it maybe River's ghost would too.
Those moments continued, the ignoring, the accidental responses, for years. Until his hand brushed the diary altering the status quo, bringing repressed urges to the surface.
He needed a change, retirement wasn't enough. Nothing would ever be enough to sooth the ache inside him.
One day, not long after the change, he heard her intake of breath, caught sight of her golden curls on the fringe of his vision. He never looked at her directly if he could help it. He allowed himself what was supposed to be a glance when she gave no further reaction.
He watched her turn slowly, her lips moving ever so slightly while she read the names printed on the spinning rotor. She wore the pale blue gown she had reserved for leisurely days aboard the TARDIS, hair in that messy pony tail she favoured. Her curls, as usual, escaping and adding a halo effect. His personal angel, beautiful and tormenting.
He could see her eyes were glassy from unshed tears at the dedication to the lost and left behind above them, but as her attention went to walls and console, the cold interior, they turned disapproving. Before she could catch him staring at her he looked away.
"Why? " She finally voiced.
Really?! He sighed angrily. He was trying to cope here without her and she was going to disapprove and be upset by a change to the console room?
"Why would you do this? Frankly, it's... looks like a funeral parlor designed by...by someone who despises you!"
The Doctor scowled at the screen in front of him and began punching in coordinates to who knew where. His thoughts were on her reaction, the unmistakable hurt in her eyes beneath the disapproval.
He had never minded, still didn't, all the sacrifices and changes he had made to his life for her. Whether silly or important. Be it her no hats policy or him taking the slow path to keep days with her. Not once had he even felt remotely angry about it, but he was angry now. He did mind her audacity to dictate his grief. She would not rule him from the grave.
If she wanted a say in his damn life she needed to come back and live her own.
The thought made him angrier, at himself and her.
River didn't seem to notice, or at least she didn't care, from her tone and next words.
"You know, fine if you need a change of scenery inside and out. But if you think you are going to ignore Vastra you're wrong. "
He stared into space and clenched his jaw. So she knew did she? His latest mean tempered spat at Vastra because she had been there, been available and like his wife deemed him grieving to long. Well, he wasn't going to apologize too anyone. Alive or dead. It was his life.
"Yeah, ignore me. But I know you're listening! Go back, and stop acting like a child." She ranted now.
He practically pounded the console as he pointlessly flipped, pushed, or switched controls. When he felt her presence beside him he moved. It became a dance they performed repeatedly. The whole time he continued to ignore her, acting as if he didn't hear her reproachful reminders that he had needlessly abused one of the few real friends he had. That just because the Silurian would take it, excuse it, didn't make it less. It was uncharitable and ungrateful. It was mean.
Between the truth of her words and finding her diary under his hand, after evading her again, something inside him finally snapped. Perhaps more accurately, it shattered. A million pieces of him hitting the floor at her feet, reforming into a distorted version of himself.
The Doctor clenched his fist around the diary and turned to look at her slowly. River had already stopped to stare at him, but now he saw shock in her eyes as he glared unabashed at her. He was too angry to care about the possible consequences of looking, or of confronting.
"Do you think I am heartless? " He began in a voice so deep it rumbled like thunder, "that I can hear you but not touch and be ok? See our friends and not hurt because they remind me of you? "
She said nothing, simply stared at him with her sad, lovely eyes.
"Do you think I can endure the rest of my life with you chatting at me like you're not gone? " At her continued silence he roared, "Well I can't! "
She flinched and every bit of his pain rose to the surface. "You're not here River. You. Are. Dead and I AM alone. So go away. Stop trying to fix me because every moment you open your damn mouth to comfort me you're killing me!"
Her face filled with the heartbreak he felt and then just like that she was gone. The air was ice and her diary in his hand heavy like stone.
Struck dumb he stood there and waited but his own words came back to him and the evidence of their result resounded in the empty colourless room. She was truly gone.
Shattering for a second time, The Doctor clenched the diary to his chest, hit his knees and cried. He broke the rules and chased her away. Emptying himself, he poured out all his anguish to the old time ship who mourned with him.
When he had finally spent every tear and felt hollowed out, The Doctor took her diary, everything of her not locked away in their room and packed it up. He resigned himself to an existence without her alive or dead. He promised himself he'd never touch her diary, whose cover was the colour of lost days and had the texture of meaningless words.
Sweetie...
Day passed in silent wanderings. Time seemed to stand still and pass him by the same way, alone except for the occasional entreating by his friends to live. He couldn't.
He existed, read, and occasionally wandered away from Victorian London to stroll down alien streets. He was an observer rather than the explorer. The man who once could believe in anything dreamed instead of fire and sadness. The slight touches of colour the TARDIS added to the console room to appease her child went unnoticed.
After a particularly trippy dream of being chained to a glass tank with monsters from deep in the ocean trying to eat him, the Doctor sat with a book, attempting to read away the disturbing images. Futile but he tried diligently anyway.
Until he was startled by the feel of her hand on his shoulder and a curl tickling his ear. "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea? After a nightmare with sea monsters? A strange and self punishing choice, Doctor."
His fingers released the book against his will and his hearts seemed to find their beat once again. The Doctor quickly picked up the book and reopened it to read, not wanting to give away that her being back was like being alive again.
He turned a page, simulating reading but not seeing the words, caught up in the momentary joy of her. He was never going to be ok, he was never going stop hurting . However, he could endure it all as long as she didn't leave, being haunted was a torment he could suffer with, the alternative was not. A ghost of River was better than nothing of her at all.
"I know you can read upside down but I just don't understand why you're bothering. Impressive in some circles, but really, sweetie, you can read and speak billions of languages. Upside down reading is a bit lacking in comparison. "
Her teasing tone made him smile, the fact he was actually holding the book upside down made him realize he didn't want to pretend he couldn't hear her.
The Doctor closed the book and looked down at the floor with a sigh. "You distract me. "
"Nothing's changed then."
"Everything has."
It really had and it was perhaps the worst pain of all, change wasn't always an adventure. Sometimes it was just hell.
"Well something has changed. Not by much yet enough to take out some of that cold funeral parlor look. "
He blinked. "Sorry, what? "
"The colours. "
"The col-" his eyes finally saw them. The traces of colour on the console. Blues, oranges, red. A shift slightly up and over and he saw the veins of orange in the wall. Deep down he knew they had been there, for a little while at least, but they hadn't really been there until her
She spoke them into existence, as she had for so much in their time together.
"You like them? " He already knew the answer.
"Yes, it's an improvement. My old mum chose well. "
Amused, The Doctor snorted softly. The TARDIS and her child ganging up on him, business as usual.
Silence reigned between them, awkward in only that he wanted to say so much and had no words to do so. After a bit, he felt River lean against the console next to his chair. "Why do you refuse to travel, to wander? You're not meant to stay put. "
"Because..." He swallowed wanting to look her in the eye but terrified he'd lose her again. Instead, he confessed to the circular names far above him. "because I miss you and I know despite trying to believe otherwise that you're gone. "
"I'm not. I'm at the library, I didn't-. "
"River please..." he pleaded needing her to understand. " I can't, I can't think of you there and talk to you here and ..." he looked down again. "I need you here. "
He felt the brush of her hand over the back his head, a familiar act meant to comfort. There was a time when it did. "You blame yourself. I wish you wouldn't. "
"There is no one else to blame. "
"That doesn't mean you have to be, my love. Doctor you need to ...try. " her voice was so full of love it made him ache.
" I think you need to find some girl, have a fling, maybe a string of them. You need to live..."she sighed sadly, "You need to hope in the impossible again. "
The Doctor shook his head at the barely serious fling suggestion. Even if he could go back out and 'try', that was something that would not happen. She was all he wanted. Something they both knew, or at least he hoped she did. He got her point however.
It was the idea of hope, for her and for him, that had him turning and reaching up, eyes closed, to cup her face. "You were the last of my hope. You were the impossible alive but you're gone now." A tear he didn't think he had left escaped him.
"Everything good about me left with you. I'm sorry River... I can't hope because if I did.."
"I know my love, and I'm sorry."
There was the barest of touches of her whisper against him before the more firm feel of her lips against his own. It tingled through him, making his hearts ache because he knew deep down that this was all inside of his mind.
Still her soft lips warmed him and for that brief moment he felt a comfort he's not felt in a long time. Yet, like all brief glimpses of days long past, it ended. He felt her pull away.
"You are my impossible too. "
Seconds passed before he was able to work up the courage to open his eyes and find he's alone. Even expecting it, it managed to be a sharp slap against his senses, dulled only with knowing she'll return. She had to.
In time, when she does, he doesn't ignore her, sometimes the pain even let him speak to her. For the sake of his hearts though, he never dares look at her again, unable to bear her countenance, and a need to keep to the rules, to keep her.
River's ghost was the last of his sanity. He struggled in a reality where her hearts no longer beat, where her warm body no longer filled the sheets on their bed, and where adventures with her by his side are a distant painful memory. Her presence there with him, though a loving shadow of herself, was the lie to shield him from what he believed was the truth.
A truth he knew would one day be his end.
He was always alone.
Kudos and comments are delicious cookie filling for a writer. Please let me know what you think.
When it comes to Echoes I'm currently experiencing a… chapter block. I know what I want but it's coming very slowly. That and family stuff has made it hard to focus. Anyway, it's coming and hopefully this helps tide over.
Thanks to all for support and patience, it really means a lot to me.