The end of this is up to you. I could not, for the life of me, choose.
All of us have to make choices, whether by divine intervention or by natural causes. Our decisions define who we really are, not our abilities or how we showcase our personalities. To tell the character of a person, you need only look at the paths they took. But sometimes, the choices one is forced to make can be unbearable, turning any good person into a sinner by no fault of their own. Sometimes the stakes are held so high that either choice is the wrong one, sometimes it simply doesn't matter because everything is in the hands of Fate. He will let you feel like you're holding all the cards, like everything is going your way, but with one click of His fingers, and one breath from His lips, He will snatch everything out of your hands and tear everything to know and hold to be true to shreds.
Tears slowly collaborating in his swampy green eyes began to slip mercilessly down his pale, ashen cheeks. His expression is one of the most debilitating and agonized pain, and the tousled locks of his hair which usually bounced maniacally all over the place were standing still, frozen solid, knowing well enough not to be a distraction at this moment in time. Time. If only he had given up on its splendours then he wouldn't be in this situation right now – this game changing dilemma. It's so desperately unfair that he wants to hurl himself off the edge of this stupid little planet into the depths of space with no oxygen, no way of survival and just die. Because he knows he can't ever pick; he won't ever be able to make this decision.
It may seem like an overreaction, but rest assured, once you realize exactly what is going on, wanting to die rather than make this choice is probably the better move. But there is no way of wiggling and worming out of it. There is no chance of escape, because he can't leave either of them behind. He just has to choose which one gets to live, and which one gets to die. And they're both so important, each holding the whole space of one of his hearts, oh why did he ever have to bring both of them here? He was just a stupid tempted man, lured in by the promise of glory if he did his job and saved the planet from which the distress call had emanated from.
It was one of those things where the rest of reality would notice and yell Don't go, it's a trap! but no, being the ignorant fool he was, he walked right into the metaphorical steel cage and then watched in horror as the latch closed swiftly behind him. And he had led all three of them in; it was all his fault. He as good as deserved this, he had been too cocky, too loud, too overconfident, and now someone was making him pay for being so overbearing. He had gone too wild, disobeyed too many old orders, committed genocide and other horrific crimes that plagued him in the rare time that he slept, and now he was being brought back down to earth with a bang almightier than the one which started the universe.
He slowly brought back his head from where his chin had rested on his chest, and looked directly at her. It was even more frightful than the time when he had looked into the untempered schism at a mere eight years old; to see the terror on her face, the tears in her eyes, the blood on her throat where the creature was jamming a blade into her flesh. She looked at him desperately, whimpering loudly, knowing how difficult this was for him. She had given up squirming the moment the knife had been whipped out and pressed delicately against her pale skin, and he instantly recognized how powerless she was. She couldn't escape that, there was no hope in hell. Even a deal with the devil couldn't save her now. Unless he chose her.
He diverted his attention to what stood on her right hand side. There were no physical signs of hurt or damage, yet the life was slowly being drained out of her. He could see in the way her lights had dimmed, the way her blue cloak was fading into the background, like someone was sucking all the colour out of her. She hummed and groaned mournfully and painfully, and he felt his stomach contracting in misery at the pain he was causing her to go through. Throughout the years, they had been through many tights squeezes, times when it looked like she was so broken that she might never recover, and times when she felt like he had abandoned her. She also knew how horrific it was to make him choose between the two entities standing before him. She couldn't get out though, not unless he picked her instead.
He once again looked down at the floor, his feet the only thing he could gaze at which would not make him feel guilty, and he knew that he could run away. But then they would both die, and though he wouldn't have to make the decision, he could never let that happen. This planet was so dreadfully cold, and yet he felt impervious to everything apart from emotion. He knew he had but three minutes left to make up his mind, and then there was no hope for any of the three of them. He has to pick, even though it is an impossible choice. One will live, one will die, and even though he's been in this position before, it's never been so devastating.
Does he choose his wife or his travelling machine? River Song or the TARDIS?
Some hours previously…
'Doctor River Song, I do believe you owe me an apology for how we departed last time,' the Doctor called slyly, stepping out of his magnificent time machine and into the Stormcage cell on which the security alarm was now just constantly disabled – there was no point keeping installing them because she always set them off, and she always broke them. It was costing them more than all the staff's wages put together to keep replacing cameras and alarms around her cell.
River was roused from her sleep, groggily peeling her eyes open, rubbing them with the back of her palm and slowly sitting up against the wall. Her hair was springing and bouncing all over the place, catching in her eyelashes and she leant against the wall, looking completely exhausted. This was the first time she had ever been asleep when he had dropped in; a first in just around two hundred years. For her, it looked around about the same amount of time. Maybe, just because Fate was deciding to play nice today, they were at the same point in their timelines.
He anticipated the words to come out of her mouth before she even wrenched her lips apart. 'Hello Sweetie,' she murmured through a large yawn which she managed to supress with her hand, and she eagerly clambered out of her uncomfortable grey bed, having just noticed that he was here. It was always nice to have him here with her. Somehow it made the eight hundred and eighty thousand years worth of penance shorter. 'And in accordance to that last comment, was that…Grendel Three by any chance?' she asked, her chirpiness a bit too bright for anyone who had just tumbled out of bed.
He nodded, and she swanned over to him and gently pressed her lips to his, drawing him in for an irresistible kiss. 'Does that make up for it?' she asked teasingly afterwards and he nodded happily, grabbing her hand and pulling her inside the TARDIS. 'Come on Song, let's go and have an adventure!' he exclaimed happily, running up the console and pulling the screen around to where he had positioned himself. He tapped in a few possibilities and co-ordinates, taking longer than necessary seeing as he pushing all the wrong buttons, and then turned back to face her.
'Where shall we go Song? Go and see the supernova at the end of the Sixth Realm? Spend some quality time with Enid Blyton? Ooh, we could go and pop in on Will and Kate, I promised them I would go and see them at some point after the wedding…' he rambled incessantly, waving his hands around like a mad professor. She smiled at just how…cute he was simply was. This was her Doctor all over, totally comfortable yet still seeing the need to impress her with how much he could do for her. He didn't need too, as long as he loved her she didn't mind.
'I don't mind Sweetie, what's important is where are we exactly?' River asked, pulling out her cobalt blue diary, sketched out like the TARDIS which she adored so much. He stared at her in confusion, seeing she had no pockets he could catch a glimpse of.
'Hang on, where did you get that from?' he asked confusedly and she looked at him, raised her eyebrows, replied sweetly and innocently with, 'Oh Sweetie, now that really is spoilers,' and then did a very obvious wink right at him. A few years ago he would've blushed like a tomato and then hurried away, but being more experience this time, he muttered something to himself along the lines of you bad, bad girl and then continued running around the console whilst she tried to reach where they were at the moment.
'Have we done the Bone Meadows? Picnic at Asgard? Battle of the Shades? Scoundrel City?' River kept listing places that he just kept consistently nodding along to every place she mentioned until she reached the end of her little book. She looked up at him, her disbelief patched all over her beautiful face and he asked, 'Urm, so, the last thing you did was Treasure Cove?'
That had been good. First of all, River had grabbed him and hitched a ride to Netherland on her vortex manipulator, to which they then met up with Peter Pan, and defeated Captain Hook alongside the help of that alligator. It had been a job well done.
River nodded and dumped the book on the chair and strolled impressively up to next to where he stood. 'So, onwards, next adventure for both of us,' she murmured a little sadly. She had always known that the few years before the end of their time together, they would be in sync and now it was starting. He seemed to recognize this as well and so the Doctor grinned encouragingly, wrapped his arm around her shoulders and squeezed her tightly.
'A new adventure. But where to Song? That we need to decide on!' he called excitedly, bringing them both back to normality, and once again taking a few turns around his brilliant time machine's rotor, clapping his hands together and persisting that she answered. He always let her choose where they went, but normally Sexy got a bit complacent and took them where she wanted to go. Which was always where they needed to go anyway so it hardly made any difference. He knew the TARDIS and River had a very strong relationship, and he didn't want to be the man stupid enough to come between them.
River made a few suggestions, and he put each of them into his calculations of equations before deciding that he should just put it on randomizer. She seemed a little drowsy still and her ideas were a little…boring if he had to say so himself. He had never been one for going to the zoo or the cinema, he had both of them aboard, and they seemed like such little trivial human things. And it was always then that he would remember she had never really spent time living on earth as a proper human being, and he felt bad. But he didn't want to be bored anyway.
And that's exactly when the alarms started to go off.
He turned his neck and looked at her, raising his eyebrows irresistibly and beckoning his head towards the magnificent hand blown glass time rotor, and asked, 'How about this one then Song?' She rolled her eyes at him, swivelling them so hard that they almost got stuck in the back of her head. She smiled patiently and then offered up 'Do I have a choice in the matter?'
The Doctor jumped down the stairs and ran over to her and tapped her on the nose. 'Of course. Shall we go now or should we go later?' She drew out a heavy sarcastic sigh and then nodded, and he squealed like a little boy who had just been offered a lollipop and sprinted over to the console once again, checking the co-ordinates of the origin of the distress call and quickly plugged them into his keypad, to which River then checked and corrected and they were on their way.
On the journey there, the Doctor did a very rushed yet very informative explanation of where abouts they were going in time and space in all of reality; a planet made entirely of ice called Greycha which had the inhabitants of the Skylar creatures – great tall human like figures made entirely of ice and with heads like huge ice crystals. They had never been, but part of River's archaeology course had been conducted around the planet and thereby she knew quite a lot about the planet (having had a hand in discovering it…).
River perched on the edge of one of the battered leather seats and stared comically at her husband as he jumped and ran and hopped alongside his console, programming his TARDIS more than was probably necessary and glimpsing at her from behind the time rotor, pulling stupid faces at her. Gosh, she had married a complete ten year old. He was deadly serious at times, but she liked that he wasn't all the time – that would just be depressing.
After about seven minutes of this mad bopping, the TARDIS suddenly crashed harshly onto the hopefully solid ground beneath them. The impact was so rough and sudden that River was thrown from her seat and the Doctor clutched hold of a random lever before his legs started sprawling into the splits when the shaking stopped. 'You idiot – did you do that on purpose?' River growled angrily, using the console to wrench herself back up to her feet, her hair even messier than it had been when she had woken up.
He shook his head confusedly and replied, 'No, I don't get why that happened.' He paused for a second and scratched his head absentmindedly, 'It's not supposed to do that.' And for the next few seconds, he spent his time patting the console and muttering to her, making sure she was okay and asking what had just happened. River laughed silently and then suddenly yelled, 'DOCTOR!'
He nearly jumped out of his skin, but shrugged this off and muttered, 'Yes River?'
'Distress call? You know, Skylar in trouble and all that?' she asked, raising her hands and tapping a non-existent watch on her left wrist. The Doctor saw that she had a good point and gently stroked the console before heading on outside, pulling her along by the hand, his child-like excitement etched all across his face.
All you could describe outside as was simply chilly. There was an immense wind, probably of around sixty miles an hour strong, and although it did not rain, it seemed like there was frozen specks of ice inside the wind, smashing against their cheeks. Snow was falling like it was being tipped from a giant bucket in the sky and settled into River's hair as if it were a magnet and they were positively charged towards it. The Doctor looked pleased, stepping forwards and embracing his arms into the wind and snow, his hair flopping around insanely and he let out a laugh of prosperity and greatness.
However, River did not follow him and it was purely because she was frozen to the spot. He had totally forgotten she was in trousers and a vest top, and when he saw her, she had uncountable and immeasurable amounts of goose bumps running up and down her arms and all over her face. She glared at him and muttered, 'You could've warned me about the weather.'
'Well you half discovered it and spent four years studying it – you should know!' he retaliated, his eyes twinkling in amusement. She glared once again, but it was all in good humour and she disappeared back into the TARDIS and headed towards the wardrobe whilst he went on, wanting to discover why on earth a distress call had emanated from here and why it had caused the TARDIS to crash land so violently…
Half an hour later…
They stood on top of the greatest and highest mountain in the whole of reality, on the edge of Greycha, hand in hand, staring out across the whole bright white landscape. It was simply breath-taking, not clichéd in any way shape or form, and it was the perfect place for the star crossed lovers; husband and wife standing in the snow.
'So you couldn't find anything wrong then?' River asked, leaning her head on the Doctor's shoulder whilst he wrapped his arm around her waist and kissed her on the temple. 'No, nothing,' he replied quietly, not wishing to break the intense and beautiful silence that swept over the entire world. He could stand here forever, looking over the snowy back drop alongside the love of his life, nothing disturbing the gentle peace that had overcome the two of them. It was times like this that really made the whole in-prison-jumbled-up-timelines worthwhile and bearable.
'I love you,' he whispered in her ear and she placed a gloved hand on his cheek and softly kissed him. She whispered back three words that no other living organism in the whole of reality would understand, and it sent shivers down his spine at her pronunciation and melody and how simply they pieced together from her lips. I love you in Gallifreyan.
As incredible as everything was, the bitterness of the cold began to settle in during the next ten minutes and they both found themselves wishing to just go home. Back to their TARDIS where they could kiss and relax and just be married for once. They both pulled their shoes from the snow which they had been slowly sinking into, but before they set off on the twenty minute trek back to that big blue box, River took once last glimpse across the frosted white horizon, and there was the minutest expression of just nothing. No emotion whatsoever, just cold harsh reality. That scared him.
By the time they reached the TARDIS, both had flushed cheeks and bright red noses and frozen ears, but were laughing merrily. However, all the pleasantries stopped the instant they were in seeing distance of their time machine. The Doctor dropped River's hand immediately and sprinted across the ice, nearly falling over but having such wretched determination that he stopped himself from doing so. She just watched events collapse from afar.
He banged on the door, but got shocked and was sent flying two foot backwards into the air, landing harshly on his rear end. He got back up, terror and fear and thrilling disbelief on his face and tried to pound on the doors again, but indeed got shocked. There seemed to be some sort of eerie green glow surrounding the TARDIS, preventing anyone from even touching it and the Doctor almost ripped his sonic screwdriver from his breast pocket and started frantically waving it about, trying to collect data as quickly as possible.
River Song just watched.
'Oh God, how did that happen?' he whispered, flicking the sonic up and scanning the data with his superb Time Lord brain. He glanced back up at the eerie green glow, seeming to intensify, becoming more and more opaque with every second that passed in this stunning place. 'How the hell did that happened?' he roared, chucking his screwdriver across the land so it smashed on the side of a previously unnoticed cave entrance and broke into a million pieces.
River Song continued to watch, unfazed by his rantings and ravings.
'River, it's a Chronon loop!' he yelled, almost ripping his hair from his skull in anger and ferocity. When she did not give a response, he marched up to her, pulled her and shook her by the shoulders and shouted, 'River do you not understand what that means? It's draining the power – she's going to die!' The desperation in his voice was hard to neglect or ignore and the passion that fuelled through him was projected onto his treatment of his wife, who he proceeded to scream in her face one more. 'River, help me! You've got to help me save her!'
He released his hold on her and ran back to the TARDIS, flapping his hands about, tossing theories and ideas from side to side, pacing quickly as he tried to figure out what to do. When two minutes had passed, it was clear that there was not much time left. That was when he turned around, ready to fall to his knees and beg for her help when the most frightful and strangest thing he could ever have anticipated happened.
River Song began to flicker. It started as a mere crackle, but soon turned into something that resembled static and before he had good opportunity to reach her, she disappeared. 'RIVER!' he yelled, the whole planet echoing his words over and over and over again. What the hell just happened? Where did she go? How was she flickering? What had done that to her? And then he realized. It was a hologram - programmed by who though?
He sank to his knees, trying not to lose control entirely of this situation which was a pretty useless plan because he could see that events here were already spanning out of his range of control. This was a trap, he realized, with that horrible sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Something, and he didn't know what, had lured him here and captured both his TARDIS and his wife. But what for? Surely there was nothing that either could be useful for. As harsh as that sounded, he knew that if someone was trying to get revenge, they always went for him.
But this was a different kind of revenge. One that would rip him apart.
He began running around in the small space surrounding the TARDIS, the blue becoming quite faint behind the impregnable green. He searched with loud roars, disrupting the quiet and serene aura of the place until exhaustion overcame him in less than three minutes and he dropped down to his knees and silently wept, not having a clue what to do. His wife has disappeared, his time machine will die in approximately seven minutes. And he is absolutely powerless to do anything about it. It can't get worse.
And then it does.
Suddenly, he hears a piercing scream that he hoped never to hear again, not after the last time, and three figures appear from the depths of the cave at which he had thrown the sonic at previously, the remnants almost completely buried in the snow that had fallen in the brief time since he had launched it. One figure is tall and delicate, standing at around six and a half foot tall, and made completely of ice. The head is sharp, like a billion icicles converging upon one small area and she seems to drip with ice and diamonds. This is no civilian Skylar.
The second is the one that hurts him the most. The body of the Skylar is just as tall, but nearly half as skinny and the body is hardly able to be seen behind the body of River Song. A long gash lays across her forehead and is bleeding badly, dripping onto her eyelashes and then falling off, landing on her chin. The Skylar has a knife made of the strongest yet sharpest metal he had ever laid eyes upon pressed on her throat, and is holding both her arms behind her back in a death grip.
'RIVER!' he booms, running over to the her, but the Skylar free of any prisoner raises its hand and hisses, 'Back Time Lord.' Her voice is like a snakes whisper; harsh and whispery, poisonous and venomous but he does exactly as he is told.
'What do you want?' he asked nervously, trying not crack the eggshells he found himself walking upon. This was all wrong. According to every history record, the Skylar's were a peaceful and magnificent race, who ruled by democracy and did not involve themselves in wars. But these were despicable.
The female narrowed her eyes at him, her irises blacker than the night sky and coal itself, and he was all too afraid that she would freeze his hearts with her death glare. 'A Time Lord is a lord of time,' she stated and he was about to butt in when she continued, in her malicious hissing tone, 'And one who is expected to turn up on time.'
He is confused. He stares at River and she looks at him in utmost fear, and she glances down at the blade and then back and him and gives the most minute shake of her head she possibly can. There's no way out of it – one wrong move and the Skylar will slit her throat.
And then realizes. 'You were the ones you sent the distress call.'
A nod is all that is given to confirm.
And then he gets angry. He stomps his foot defiantly, takes three steps towards the Skylar who hisses angrily, its tongue forked like that of a snake who they definitely seemed to be acnestors of, and he roared, 'Here I am. What do you want now? Because you don't need to kidnap my wife and destroy my TARDIS to get it!'
'Silence fool!' she roared back, mimicking his tone, one of the icicles on top of her head cracking and falling from her head. 'We called for your help two thousand years ago. Since then, they came and they destroyed everyone.'
He stopped being angry.
'They gave me, Queen Noe the choice; destroy your own race and leave an end to it, or let them go out and conquer every world and every star and destroy reality,' Noe screamed, her voice almost getting lost in the ferocious wails. She advanced towards him, taken up so much by her monstrous anger, grabbed him by the collar and held him up high, revealing teeth sharper than a pile of sewing pins. 'Give me one good reason not to kill you here and now!' she whispered maliciously, before dropping him onto the cold ice and not helping him to stand.
'Who's "they"?' he asked, rubbing at his throat, constricted by the pulling of his collar, trying to buy River more time to escape. If he had her, then they could easily get the TARDIS back.
Queen Noe turned to him, and he swore he could see tears in her eyes before she sharply called out one name. 'Daleks,' she said simply, before ordering her colleague to kill River.
'NO!' he roared, and stopped Noe's accomplice just in time, 'I'm sorry, but there would've been nothing I could do anyway. I'm sorry your race has gone, but there was nothing I could do,' he begged solidly. The Doctor looked at the TARDIS, the only thing left being the bright lights that were slowly draining in themselves.
'You could have tried.'
One time, a long, long time ago, he had said that. And not just to anyone but to River. And here was the Queen of the Skylar, one of two left in the sky telling him the same thing. It wasn't fair.
'And here you see Doctor. It is your fault. You made me choose to eradicate my people in order to do your job of saving the universe, and now you too have a choice.' She smiled wickedly at him and then glanced once towards the TARDIS and once towards River, where breathing was beginning to send the knife deeper into the throat of her skin with every exhale.
'Your wife or your time machine. You have two minutes or I'll take the supreme pleasure of killing both of them.'
She smiled at his horrified expression.
'Time is ticking Doctor. And what fun awaits.'
X – X – X
The Doctor and the TARDIS; that's who it had always been, for however many years he did not care to remember – it made him feel old. Their first meeting in that museum had been a chance encounter and he had simply stolen her away, bonding on sight in body mind and soul. She was part of him, and he was part of her. His dear. Her beautiful idiot. The greatest love story in the universe; the Doctor and his TARDIS, flying around and saving the day. He would open that door with the click of his fingers and no one would ever doubt his power. They completed one another. She had been empty without him, and he the same. They couldn't bear to parted for too long and the many times he had found himself in danger had always brought wretched thoughts to her as to what would happen if she lost him. So she kept him safe, his great love. He told her all the time, he loved her.
But then there was River Song. He loved her as well. Every way he looked at her he saw her beauty and her madness; just the same as him. But she was gorgeous, flawless even and he had never once met anyone as incredible as her. His whole life got switched back to front, upside down, side to side and every other way imaginable when they met but he never thought he could fall so wholly in love with anyone. He never thought he would have a family, but here she was, his wife, his love, the woman he wanted to spend every day of forever with. She had been through so much for and because of him, and he could never stand the thought of letting her down. He married her because he loved her beyond reason, without a doubt, uncontrollably and mercilessly. He loved her.
So that made it an impossible choice.
'This isn't fair,' he muttered, shaking his head, refusing to accept this as being reality. It couldn't be. In the next second he would wake up and River would be next to him in their bed, inside their TARDIS and they would fly away on another adventure.
She couldn't die here or he would never meet him.
She couldn't die here otherwise he would be stranded and a chunk of his soul missing.
The queen just growled violently and said, 'Life isn't fair Doctor. We learnt that the hard way because of you.'
He would ask why they weren't punishing him, but that was a stupid question. River and the TARDIS's lives, in his books, were worth far more than his own.
Before he could argue again, with one minute to spare, River cried out, 'Save her Doctor. Save her! You love her, it's alright.' The Skylar with the knife tightened the blade against her throat where beads of blood were forming but Queen Noe waved this aside and allowed River to continue, without the blade centimetres into her skin. 'You need her, my love. It's always been you and her. I'll be okay, I've have a good life.' She was beginning to cry, and that was the one thing she never did.
'But what about all the times we've had?' he cried back, trying to rush forwards towards her, but being stopped. She looked him in the eyes, tears now running ragged down her face, making her hiccup and blurring her sight. 'Oh you reminiscent idiot, none of that matters anymore!' she yelled, tears streaming down her face, her nose tingling with the tears ravaging her face.
He glanced at his time machine, but she said the same thing as River. Save the girl, she's your wife, you need her. You love her. You love me too, but she needs you more than you will ever know.
'Ten seconds Doctor,' Noe cackled and the Doctor fell in distorted cries, clapping his hands over his ears trying to block out her words. But he could still hear her. Tears pooled around his body, and he hugged his arms around his ribs as he heard River shriek in agony, bent over double as tears streamed down her face, not from the knife but from her tears and how this decision was destroying all three of them.
Six.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
'I've made my choice,' he stuttered and the queen gleefully instructed him to continue. The Doctor, destroyer of worlds, who had hurt yet healed so many, looked at her, and whispered, 'I'm so sorry. I love you.'