Prompt: "Does Eleven still visit Sister of Mine (from the Family of Blood) every year? If so, does River know?" Thanks to phoenixwormwood137 for this one. ~madis
His hands fold into themselves, origami with fingers and palms. The mirror is silent, the implacable eye of the world. Bed, table, the chair in front of the mirror: all there accounted for in duplicate. He waits, silent, and his backward self waits too. Finally she appears around the doorjamb: slow, hesitant, her expression curdled along the sour milk edge of bitterness. Her red balloon bobbles above her head—Sauron's eye sees all.
He sighs, staring at her. It's his penance, coming here. The nuns had their whips, the monks their scourges, trying in vain to purify their bodies through pain.
He has her.
Elbows on his knees, he hunches forward in his chair. The exact posture of guilt. His words, when they come, drop like stones.
"Hello, Sister-of-Mine."
Living forever is such a burden.
He's forgiven her long ago. But the prison is designed for forever, as it had been with all her family. And he is sorry. She is trapped in amber, fossilized breathing and alive. It would have been more merciful to let her die.
But that was exactly the point. He hadn't been feeling particularly merciful that day.
River, when she was very young, had asked him once why he kept every single one of the mirrors in his room covered. (The curse to be behind every mirror, any mirror. Especially his.)
He'd sighed, rolled over in bed to tangle their knees together, kissed the corner of her mouth.
(Flashing across his mind's eye the frozen point of Mars, forcing Rory's hand on to the knob and telling him to choose, the Dalek informing him he'd make a good member of its species.)
He keeps the mirrors covered
visits her once a year, every year
"So I don't forget who I am."
Because good men don't need rules, and he has so many of them.