This is a story I wrote for an English project. I would very much appreciate constructive criticism.
Disclaimer: The BBC owns Doctor Who.
"Everyone knows that everyone dies. And nobody knows it like the Doctor. But I do think that all the skies in all the worlds might just turn dark if he ever, for one moment, accepts it. Everyone knows that everyone dies. But not every day. Not... today." ~River Song (Forest of the Dead by Steven Moffat)
He can still remember that day vividly. The Vashta Nerada killed all of River's archaeology team. He pointed and laughed at archeologists, but something about her was different. He would later learn she had only become an archeologist to find him.
He could have saved her. He knew he could have if she just let him. That mysterious woman had his screwdriver and knew all about him. She was a mystery until he met her mother, and figured out that the mysterious woman was his wife.
Why didn't she let him save her? He could've gone to a time right before she accepted the mission and told her not to go. She would have trusted him; she always did.
The worst part of it all was that she died saving him when he didn't even know who she was. Their timelines were back to front. On that day he was at the very beginning of his, but she was at the very end of hers.
He didn't know what it meant when she said, "Not those times. Not one line. Don't you dare." He can see it now, but it's too late. She already died and is only mentally linked with Clara. But Clara's dead, so why is River still here?
She had hinted at more. Maybe they have run the back to front courses of their timelines, and they can start together.
He has had so many years, at least a few centuries, to think about how he could possibly save her. Obviously, he will give her his screwdriver so that she can be saved to the Library's database. But what else?
He didn't know there was even a glimmer of hope in this fixed point in time. Maybe that's where he's wrong. He has a flocculating definition of a fixed point. Certain things have to happen, but they don't have to happen in the most black and white scenario the way everybody expects it to. His death is proof of that.
Clara was his saving grace. She always had been, even if he didn't know it. She was there after the Ponds left him in what was a fixed time stream. She was there when he didn't see her, through out his whole life. She was even the one who told him to get his TARDIS as opposed to a different one.
Clara is the impossible girl, and he just figured out why. She jumped into his time stream to save him, but was killed from the pure time energy. She was scattered into a million different versions of herself and spread throughout time and space to save him. She was anywhere and everywhere, so there must have been a version of her to save him at the Library.
River told him not to rewrite any of time and space for her. This was different. Their time lines were caught up, and it was for them not just her.
Clara would be fine with it. She was born to save the Doctor. She was born to die over and over. She made that decision when she stepped into his time line to track down the Great Intelligence and protect the Doctor.
If Clara would just sacrifice herself to get River out of the database, he would be eternally grateful. After all, Clara's sole purpose is to save the Doctor, but River saves the Doctor in more ways than Clara ever could.