Disclaimer: Dr. Who is obviously not my property.
This is the first time I translate one of my fics in English. Sorry if it's not very good, I did my best. If someone would correct me, I would be happy !
Moreover, this fic was written after a Calogero song, "the fireworks". Enjoy!
It was one of those summer nights that can not be found anywhere else but on earth. The air was soft, still colored with the fragrance of the sun's rays, and the ink sky carried a myriad of stars in a diadem.
They had assembled on the hill, in small groups, as a family, since dusk fell. The more the shadow grew, the more their number increased. And laughters was rustling under the stars, the impatient exclamations, the thrill of the crowds waiting while the seconds slaken into minute.
In the midst of the multitude they were there, both, the sweet grass deafening the sound of their footsteps. She had slipped her little hand into the reassuring one that surrounded her completely and trotted behind him, too small to keep pace with her giant steps. When he realized it, he stopped, ashamed, and knelt before her, holding out his arms.
For a moment his clear irises lingered on the childish face with so fine features. The blue-green eyes were glowing with fatigue but she smiled at him bravely : she did not let him seeing the damage. Then she threw herself at him, wrapping her graceful arms around his neck, and he plunged his nose into her foamy curls, her wild curls, her curls that crowned her with red gold.
It took him only a moment to put her on his shoulders, shielding her from crowd movements, and straightening up. Only then did the first crackle rise, just as the star made its way through the ink of the night.
" It begins ! "
Exclaimed a teenager, not far. Everybody was silenced at the moment and thousands of faces rose to the sky.
It was enough for the first flower to agree to bloom, a bright red, soon followed by another of the deepest blue and another, and yet another, exploding into sidereal arabesques to make bouquets of universes.
The amazed little girl, in truth almost a baby, reached out her palms to those ephemeral constellations feeling almost able to catch them.
The lights of the fireworks were reflected in her eyes, in her lioness mane, the nimbant of fantastic lights. What was she thinking about, in front of those not-for-long-time stars that were born, shone, and then slid down, falling back to the ocean? Did she see stars, comet rains? Galaxies to be born, maybe?
Unlike the other children who had been perched on their father's shoulders, to imitate what his own had done, she knew what the birth of a galaxy was like. Her little hearts drummed no less than when she had witnessed it, well protected by paternal arms, sitting on the edge of the old girl, her legs hanging in the interstellar space.
However, her missed her a presence, who had been sitting by their side that day, leaning against his father's shoulder. Hands always wide open to the fantastic flowers, the child looked down to try to spot her through the crowd. She was not always with them, the woman with space hair, the woman with the sweet laugh that was lulling her into telling her stories of the old days. ("Archeologist" sniffed his father in a false disdain, while he hatching them). She was not always with them, but she came back every time, welcoming them with a tender
"Hello Sweeties! Before throwing her arms around them.
Her father was always happy when she was there, that woman. He leaped around her, could not help kissing her, touching the tip of her nose, taking her hand. And she, as small as she was, loved her with all the strength of her two hearts. His mother.
A new galaxy, blue TARDIS, burst over their heads and the little girl looked up at the show. His father said it was called fireworks and only humans did it. She understood why he liked them so much, these humans, never before had she seen anything so beautiful in the universe.
She knew it, her mother would come. She never left them, never for too long anyway. And then she said she would be there.
She had said it the last time they had seen her at Darillium. She just had to go to work before. Go to a library. One day, she could accompany her, even if that's made look up his father in sky. She was a time lady after all. Her father whispered to her at night when she felted asleep. Time and space belonged to him.
The fireworks continued, making vibrate the sky whith colors.
Eyes lowered to the ground, firmly clutching his daughter's legs against him, in his hands, a man silently let his tears flow.
He looked a little strange, that lanky young man, almost too young to be a father, wearing a tweed jacket and a bow tie. And above all, he seemed to bend under the yoke of all the solitude of the world, while the blazing flowers put for a few more minutes ephemeral constellations in the eyes of his daughter.
At this moment, at the other end of time and space, in company of a man too young to know that she was more important than the universe itself, a woman - her wife - lost her life. And he, the time lord, could do nothing, change nothing. Not a line.
"Don't you dare !" She had said to him, with tears in her eyes. Now, feeling the weight of their daughter on his shoulders, he would understood why. To rewrite the time was to risk of never seeing the birth of their child, their miracle of little time lady. But that did not make things more acceptable.
He was the Doctor. It was the Oncoming storm. Armies had turned away at the mention of his name and he was helpless. Handcuffed. And not - a short smile stretched his lips before the tears came back on top - in the way she loved so much.
She. River Song. The woman who killed him. The woman he had married.
The life of his bespoke psychopath had been a firework display. She had been amazing : brilliant, too smart for her good, dangerous, caustic ... And she had been beautiful. Their daughter looked like her so much that it was almost too painful for his bruised hearts.
He should have known how much it would hurt, he had had been hundreds of years to prepare for it. But nothing could really prepare him for her absence. The universe seemed colder all of a sudden without the possibility of finding a provocative "Hello Sweetie" engraved in stone or scribbled in gallyfreyan on a piece of paper.
She had gone, his meteor, his brilliant, brilliant wife, and there remained only a blinding reflection in his eyes, an indelible imprint on his hearts.
On his shoulders the weight had become heavy and the foamy curls of his daughter, of red gold, caressed his cheek as she had placed her little head on his. The young lady had fallen asleep, her eyes filled with streaks of pink and green, universes dancing under her eyelids.
Then the one who had always been so clumsy had has moved neatly through the crowd without ever waking her. He no longer cried, and seemed indifferent to the feminine glances that sometimes lingered on his young, agreeable face. The only thing that mattered was the child he was carrying, the child for whom he would tear up the universe if he had to.
The Doctor walked silently for a while, moving away from the humans, until he found himself near a hundred-year-old elm at the foot of which he had parked his marvelous blue ship. As anachronistic as it may seem, no one was surprised by this English police box, which was buzzing softly.
Humans never noticed the TARDIS. The man with the deceptively young face opened it with a snap of his fingers and rushed inside before closing the doors in the same way.
It only took a few minutes - the time for him to put his child to bed - before the dissonant music of the TARDIS do not tear the silence.
His bow tie untied, forgotten on the floor of the control room, the Doctor leaned against the console of his "old girl".
The thought he had had a little earlier was bouncing back in his mind. She had gone, his meteor, leaving that imprint in his hearts. She was an echo. But she was also saved, somewhere in the memory of the biggest computer in the universe.
One day, when he was older, wiser, he would find a way to take her back, bypass the fixed point without changing a line.
And the firework that had been their life would resume.
As the TARDIS buzzed around him, purring a lullaby for his sleeping daughter, the last time lord was busy in the bowels of cables and wires of his ship.
The wheels of the Doctor's brilliant mind were slowly moving again, as if freed from the sorrow that had begun to devour him the moment he had lost her, several hundred years earlier.
Their race was not over, he would eventually find a way to catch her hand again. Somewhere in the bowels of the TARDIS, a little girl needed her mother. And he ... Without his firework, without his River Song, universe was way too dark.