Title: I Run To You

Author: Tygerwulfe

Pairing: Multi-Era Doctors/River

Summary: Just watch them run...

Author's Notes: A songfic written to Lady Antebellum's iI Run To You/i. Can be read without the lyrics, and that's how I'm posting it at Teaspoon, thanks to their rules. I just feel they add something. My first Doctor/River fic. I hope you like it!

I run from pain,
I run from pestilence I run from pessimists,
But I run too late

When he d first met her, he d lost her. All in the same day.

For some relationships, that could be considered a metaphor. For him and Rose, it was a metaphor for sure, and one that still made his hearts ache. From the moment he d grabbed her hand when he d been all leather armor, big ears, and blue eyes, they d been heading for Dårlig Ulv-Stranden. Heading for her hand in that of his metacrisis duplicate as he headed into the vortex to steal the memories of his best friend, and leave himself on his own again. From the moment they d met, he d lost her.

With River, though, it was far more literal.

I run my life,
Or is it runnin me?
Run from my past,
I run too fast,
Or too slow it seems

When she d first met him, he knew her. That fantastical, magical man with the blue box that could go anywhere or any when. A man who so many women had already fallen for. But she didn't fall. In fact, she d found him smug and frustrating a cosmic know it all who thought far too highly of himself and dared to pretend that he knew her.

"Hello, sweetie."

"What?" she'd snapped at him tersely. How he could be so flippant when the entire universe was at stake, she couldn't begin to fathom.

"It was the first thing you ever said to me... Oh so long ago." Now there was a fond, reminiscing tone in his voice, even as he tried frantically to cobble together an impossible piece of machinery that was theoretically supposed to save the universe but looked more suited to making espresso. And god, could she use a cup of coffee right now.

"Yeah. Great. Look out!"

By the end of that first adventure, River Song, a student who hadn't yet decided what she wanted to do with her life, had helped to save the universe. And she decided what she wanted to do, after all.

The Doctor offered her the chance to travel through time and space. This crazy man who claimed to know her from her own future, who's tiny Police Box was so much bigger on the inside, whose clothes were outlandish and mannerisms manic, held out his hand to her and said it would be his honor.

She took his hand, and the running began.

When lies become the truth,
That s when I run to you This world keeps spinning faster,
To a new disaster,
So I run to you, I run to you, baby

"Hello, sweetie."

The next time she saw him, she made sure it was the first thing she said... and every time after that.

Eventually, she'll reach the point in her timeline where he hasn t met her yet, and she knows that has to be the first thing she says to him. It helps that, by the time she stopped travelling with him to return to school (taking up Archaeology, just to poke at that mad man with a box - after all, he'd always said that time travelers point and laugh at Archaeologists - so she d be both, and then see what he thought of that), the endearment had already become second nature.

Sometimes she ran into him when there wasn't a universe threatening situation, but most of their meetings were usually filled with running. After meeting him with no less than three different faces, the next time she ran into the first him she'd met, she demanded a spotter s guide.

"Spoilers," he teased, a deliciously playful smirk on his handsome face.

Oh, this game. Well, she knew how to play this game. Hell, she even knew cheats. She sidled up to him, running a hand down his chest slowly. "Please?"

Her fingers worked their way between the buttons of his shirt, tracing lightly over the cool skin beneath, and she smirked when she heard him inhale sharply. "River, you know I can't. Besides, aren't I always recognizable?"

"Like a sore thumb," she said fondly, her fingers deftly opening two of his buttons and sliding two of her long nails lightly down from his chest to his stomach, tracing little circles over the sensitive skin she d exposed. "But that doesn t mean that all your faces will be like that."

His eyes darkened slightly, and his voice had the quiet tone of painful memories that she d come to know so well. "Yeah. But I never met you when I was wearing that face." And despite his mental distraction, his body still reacted to her touch, his muscles twitching ticklishly and his body moving closer to her instinctively.

Oh, damn him and those puppy dog eyes. Her hand stilled on his stomach, but didn't move, and her other hand lifted to caress his cheek and run her fingers through the soft hairs at his temple. "I'm sorry... Was that when you lost...?"

"Gallifrey. Yeah. Well, immediately after." He smirked a little, but tilted his head into her hand and closed his eyes. "Regeneration was sort of a side effect."

River leaned up and pressed a kiss to his forehead, then twisted her fingers into his shirt and tugged him over to the jump seat. He let her pull him over, and then let her push him into the seat so she could climb into his lap. His arms slipped around her easily and she rested her forehead against his temple, just sitting with him in silence for a few minutes.

It took four more attempts before he gave her the guide.

He never told her which face he wore when he first met her.

When it all starts coming undone,
Baby you re the only one I run to I run to you

On the worst day of her life, she fell into his arms.

For the first time, she thought that she could understand him a bit better. His loss, his pain, his loneliness... she knew that what she was feeling was a drop in the bucket compared to what he lived with every day. But after this day, she felt she had an insight she'd lacked before.

She couldn't stop crying long enough to tell him what had happened. It was the only time that she didn't greet him with a cheeky, "Hello, sweetie," and thankfully it wasn't the first time he met her. In fact, it was a version of him that knew her quite well, and she was so incredibly thankful for that. She mentally cried to the TARDIS, thanking the beautiful ship for making sure he got her message at the right point in his timeline just this once, even as she burrowed into his chest, soaking his tweed jacket in her grief.

"Shhh, I'm here River, I've got you," he whispered into her wet hair. She was shaking, absolutely soaking wet from her head to her feet. He gathered her into his arms without a care for his clothing, or the fact that she was dripping on the TARDIS. His ship could clean herself up later... right now he needed to take care of River.

Seeing her like this shook him. All of his experiences with her (the ones that had happened already, from his perspective, at least) had been with her being smug, a bit of a know-it-all when it came to his own future. Always smirking and claiming spoilers any time he tried to get any information out of her. And he had to admit, he'd grown quite fond of her - more than he'd been for anyone since Rose, really. However, it always lurked at the back of his mind; the day he met her, he lost her. And maybe if he didn't let her get too close, it would dull the pain of that memory.

Except that he was a time traveler - he knew. He knew that, for her to have the memories she did, that he had already failed. That he would fail. And now, as he held the crying woman in his arms, he was secretly glad that he'd found that Honeymoon Space Cruise for Amy and Rory. It meant he had the TARDIS to himself, and that they didn't have to deal with anyone else seeing River completely break down.

When she finally calmed enough that she wasn't crying anymore, though she was still clinging to him harder than he could remember being clung to by anyone else - and many people had clung to him over the years. He rubbed her back and finally asked her what happened.

In a quiet voice that he'd never heard from her before, the story slowly came out. An expedition the first one she'd ever been chosen to lead. The Lost Temples of Caliofrax - a sacred site on an extinction planet - a planet in which all major dominant, intelligent life forms had already gone extinct. Archaeologists and time travelers were the only ones who knew anything about the people that had once inhabited the world and she was given the honor of leading the first official human expedition to the planet. They'd ventured deeper into the temple than any expedition before them. She'd urged them on, excited at the prospect of discovery, of what they might see and find that no one had seen since the native people vanished from the planet.

They disarmed booby trap after booby trap. They went deeper and deeper. Finally, they'd camped in one of the deepest rooms of the temple, preparing the next morning to break into what they believed to be an ancient Priest's burial chamber. The team had been as excited as she was. She didn't know what they missed. What warning they hadn t spotted. Perhaps there wasn't one. But for whatever reason, they triggered something that flooded the entire complex, from the bottom up.

They'd run as quickly as they possibly could. Her second had fallen first. Followed by the two expert excavators, swept away by the rising water. She screamed their names, but her need to preserve her own life kept her going. She screamed for the Doctor, for the TARDIS, for her love to come and rescue her and her team. She knew he'd come. But by the time the TARDIS materialized , she was being pulled under. He'd thrown her a rope, saved her life, pulling her out of the water and into the TARDIS - into his arms. But she d been the only one to survive. Twelve people under her command. Twelve people counting on her to keep them safe. Twelve people she'd failed. Twelve people that had died because of her.

By the time she'd finished her story, he'd taken her into his ensuite and stripped her out of the soaked clothes, wrapping her in his own towel and then he'd taken her to his bed. At this point in his timeline, they hadn't had a physical relationship, but he was tender and gentle and careful, and she barely noticed what he was doing until she realized she was warm and comfortable and had finished her story. She looked up at him and met his eyes. The understanding and worry she saw there made her look away. "Thank you," she murmured against his bow tie. She felt, rather than saw, him smile.

We run on fumes Your life and mine,
Like the sands of time,
Slippin' right on through

Meeting in the wrong order was maddening for both of them. River's diary gave them a chance to figure out where exactly they were in their personal history, but as they grew further apart along their own timelines, even that became unreliable. Every other time they ran into each other, he was either so far behind her in her timeline that they couldn t begin to find common ground or he was so far ahead of her that he was the one who had to give their playful and traditional warning of spoilers.

And yet, she loved it. Every time she met him further back in his timeline, it was a chance to get him to fall in love with her all over again - and sometimes for her to fall in love with him again, as well. And any time she met him when he was ahead of her, it was a chance for her to relax and just sink into him.

At least when they weren't running for their lives.

And our love s the only truth,
That's why I run to you .
This world keeps spinning faster,
To a new disaster,
So I run to you, I run to you, baby

The last meeting before she left for The Library was strange, even for them. She'd seen the Doctor at his best and his worst, but she'd only seen him cry a couple of times before. This time, though, it didn't seem like he was overwhelmed by the singing towers - this seemed like genuine grief, and no matter what she did, he wouldn't tell her why. She found out too late that he cried for her.

She didn't say goodbye she wouldn't. He'd given his life for the universe many, many times. Now it was her turn. He had to have remembered this, and she cursed him for a moment internally as that sunk in. All the times she'd teased the younger versions of him with spoilers, and every version of him she'd met held the biggest spoiler of all. On the very day they'd met, he'd lost her.

And yet she couldn't make herself be angry with him for too long. Even as she sat there, strapped into the very machine that would take her life, seeing the stricken look on his face as he began to put together what it meant that she d known his true name to whisper it in his ear, she trembled with the desire to hold him. To comfort him. He didn't even know what she was to him - not for sure. And even if he knew what she was, he didn't know who she was. Not really. She was the mad Archaeology professor who'd clocked him one so he wouldn't have to die here. She was the woman who'd known his name and touched him tenderly without him realizing why. And now, here she was, about to die, and he was the one unable to do anything about it.

Even as he pleaded with her, she tried to put on a brave face. Tried to reassure him, to shush him in his panic. To let him know that, even though this was the end for her, it was only the beginning for them.

"You watch us run," she said, a gleam of memory and excitement in her eyes that seemed to quiet him for a moment. She wouldn't let him rewrite their history to save her life. Never. Not one word. Her life wasn't worth losing what they'd had. And she realized, as she plugged in the machine that would kill her, just how true that was.

When it all starts coming undone,
Baby you re the only one I run to.
I run to you.

And then, as always, much farther along his timeline, and much further back in hers, they met again for her first time. An endless cycle, their histories entwined in a maddening, twisting circle of causality and reaction that could make hearts race, save entire universes, and always culminate with them meeting for his first time - and so the cycle began anew. Through all of time and space.

Just watch them run.