Well, here we are. You and me on the last page. It's been a fun ride and thanks to anyone who commented, followed, or favourited along the way. It's my first foray into Whofic, but I think I'll come back to play again soon. I need the writing therapy to survive the coming Fall. Besides, my muse has been fueled since Moffat's Nerd HQ comment that River would probably do just about ANYTHING to the Doctor behind closed doors.
Epilogue: Stories in the End
If my ship sails from sight, it doesn't mean my journey ends, it simply means the river bends.
- John Enoch Powell
One of her favourite literary artists of the late 20th century wrote that to the well-organised mind, death is but the next great adventure and River has always believed there's a certain truth to that. Not that self-preservation hasn't always been high on her list, especially when she was younger, but a few centuries under her belt have brought perspective and taught her there are worse things to fear than death.
And she has had a good life.
Her life's work has been bound up in studying how people throughout all time and space lived and died. Some never see it coming while others have a few months or years to put things in order while their mind or body or both give out.
She was given ten minutes and it is entirely her choice. That makes all the difference.
Histories will record that she died to preserve the four thousand and twenty-two Library patrons but that won't tell the whole story. One lone witness will come closer. He will comment in an article for an obscure journal about the four thousand and twenty-third person that he married in CAL's virtual world, though the historian never was able to track her down to prove it one way or the other. And no one will mention the Doctor, because no one ever does and in any case the Universe's databases have been purged of his existence for quite some time now.
And so it will never be recorded that - in that paradoxical manner which defines them - she is here at the end/beginning to save one good man, and in doing so saves herself as well. After all, 11 comes after 10 and hauls a married couple along with him on their wedding night and because that is her beginning, this has to be her end.
The last wires connect in a flash of brilliant white light and she braces herself for the end.
But it's not.
There are no angels or demons awaiting her. Just a little girl.
"It's okay," Charlotte assures her, flanked by Doctor Moon. "You're safe. You'll always be safe here. The Doctor fixed the data core. This is a good place now."
The Library as her final refuge seems appropriate, she thinks, only half listening to what's being said as she takes in her surroundings.
"But I was worried you might be lonely," the little one smiles as if hiding a secret. "So I brought you some friends. Aren't I a clever girl?"
"Aren't we all?" says a familiar voice, though one which sounds far more confident than the ditzy assistant it once belonged to.
She whirls to find not just Miss Evangelista, but her entire team striding toward her.
"Oh, for heaven's sake!" she exclaims because now that neural relay she'd discovered the first night in her cabin on the trip here makes complete sense just as she'd trusted it eventually would. "He just can't do it, can he? That man, that impossible man! He just can't give in."
He can't any more than she could. Neither one of them likes goodbyes.
When she finds her room in the mansion there is an old, battered friend waiting for her on her bed. She'd given it to her mother once with hopes that its empty pages would be filled again. It had been and once again she'd been able to record how they'd saved reality.
In this vast Matrix of books she can think of none other she'd rather have and when the children beg her for a bedtime tale she knows just which one to tell them.
She begins with her last entry in what has always been the only story worth telling:
When you run with the Doctor, it feels like it will never end. But however hard you try, you can't run for ever. Everybody knows that everybody dies, and nobody knows it like the Doctor. But I do think that all the skies of all the worlds might just turn dark, if he ever, for one moment accepts it. Everybody knows that everybody dies.
But not every day.
Not today.
Some days are special. Some days are so, so blessed. Some days, nobody dies at all. Now and then, every once in a very long while, every day in a million days, when the wind stands fair, and the Doctor comes to call... everybody lives.
"Sweet dreams, everyone."
