"The Doctor's never loved me."
He felt his expression change, just for a moment, as he registered River's words.
Registered how very perceptive she was.
No, he hadn't. He did love her, as a friend, a relative, family, but never how she loved him. He couldn't. She was a lot of things, River. Wildly intelligent, funny, trustworthy, caring, beautiful. But no matter how much she meant to him, no matter how much they had been through together, no matter how deeply they knew each other, he simply couldn't. She was not the kind of woman he could love, her guidelines a bit too wobbly, her personality a bit too brash, her emotions held just far enough off the surface.
She was a bit too much like him, he supposed.
And after all these years, his mind was still in another universe, with his little pink and yellow human.
It shouldn't be. She was happy. She was safe.
And yet...
What hurt the most wasn't River's perceptiveness, wasn't how much he had hurt her, but that she thought falling in love was somehow beneath him.
Rose would be shaking her head or laughing.
The latter, because she knew just how wrong River was.
The former, because she would know that meant he had changed, withdrawn, made himself more alien, deprived himself, after the loss of his companions. Not just her, though she played a major part.
He closed his eyes, just a blink, but long enough for a Time Lord to focus on the beating of his hearts, the feeling of her hand in his, a million centuries ago. But he would never forget. Couldn't.
You couldn't expect a sunset to admire you back. And yet he did. He admired River more than anything, but he loved Rose more than the stars themselves. He wondered vaguely if River understood he had lost a wife and a family back on Gallifrey. And then his Rose to another universe.
Maybe it was his choice, after all, not to love her back. To keep himself just far enough removed from the emotions, the dependence, the trust.
He didn't know. But he would make this night the happiest of her life, because he could already feel himself losing her.
And as the Singing Towers wept, he knew this would feel more empty and desolate than even losing Clara had.
Because River was his last tie to the past and the future, and losing your lifeline hurt just as much as losing your wife.