A week passed, and River was no where to be seen. Whether or not the Creature found this enticing she couldn't decide. In fact the quietness around her echoed a lonely call that made her shiver.
You are never truly alone,the voice whispers. She snarls her reply, forcing the beast to snap its jowls shut.
Clara was gone as well. Dropped off at home to finish her teaching. They were both alone, and she could feel his loneliness. At one time she would have reached out and held his hand, to give him some solace while he was lost in the vast realm of his mind. But it was no longer her place to fulfill. That job had gone to Clara, and before her Amy, Donna, and so forth. There was always someone for him, some brilliant, fantastic, mind would take the vacant spot and fill his world again. And with that she found her own solace, but now with Clara gone for a time, she found herself irked at the Doctors restlessness.
Over the centuries there had grown a fear in him, one that stemmed from his past companions abruptly leaving, or dying. With Clara gone, she saw how the girls absence made him more frantic than his usual madness. There was a what if floating about his mind. What if Clara decided to never come back, what if something happened, what if...
The Creature would shake her head at his useless ramblings. He would never understand that with one taste of the splendor of the world he offered, going back to a mundane existence would be the equivalent of a death sentence. To once again live a normal life will only have the light that once shone in the world you once lived in, to be sucked away, leaving an empty and pitiful void. Traveling with him is intoxicating, for the increasing need to see more becomes like a parched throat begging for a drink but is never satisfied. A sudden wish to live forever, to only stand by his side for eternity, to always be the one to hold his hand. For all his knowledge, he doesn't understand, will never understand, the pull in which he drags his companions into his magical box. How irresistible the color blue suddenly becomes; how the ears are always straining to hear that horrible, yet wonderful sound the TARDIS makes. No, he will never understand the damage he does, but maybe that is how it should be.
As she watched him continue his mindless ramblings, she wanted to smack him for his needless worry; sometimes he can be ever so ignorant.
"Of course she'll be back," she huffed, "stop talk'n to yourself and lets do something, go somewhere. I'm bored." None of the demons had been active of late.
His constant rambles, she knows, is only a tactic to keep his mind off the absence of Clara, off of the vast lonely space around him. He twitches a lever, pushes a button, racks a hand through his hair, fixes his bow tie.
"Stop your fuss'n. Lets have some fun," she nudged her elbow against his arm, "come on, like the old day's, just you an' me." He passed straight through her, and tapped a fingertip on the metal counsel.
She scrunched her face exasperatedly. "Really? You just want to mope about?" A shadow passed over his face; lost inside his mind. She looked down, knowing how useless it was. She turned and leaned back against the counsel, her arms crossed as if guarding against an unknown threat. "You should never be left alone," she murmured, "none of us should. No one is meant to ever be alone. But she's coming back you idiot. We always do. We can't help it, we are always dragged back here and its always the death of us someway or another." She laughed unhumorously, shaking her head, "I should know."
She watched him for a minute or two, waiting for something to occur, but instead he rested his hands on the counsel, staring down at the numerous buttons; he always liked buttons, big red buttons are so much easier, he would say.
"So thats it then? We just gonna stand about until dear old Clara comes back again?" She grunted her frustration, rocking back and forth on her feet. "You make me almost wish River was here." She left him alone in the room, walking back toward kitchen. She cant eat anything, doesn't ever need to, but she liked the smell of tea that always seemed to be floating about the room. It reminded her of her mother. She walked toward the table in the middle of the room, yellow roses were planted daintily in the middle; Clara's doing. She treads through the vast space- nothing in the TARDIS is ever small-while purposely ignoring the women sitting at the table, cooly drinking a steaming mug of tea.
"You haven't told me your name yet," Rivers voice intrudes any thought of excluding pleasantries. The Creature lets out a long sigh before pulling out a chair to join her. "Whats in a name?" she mused rather than questioned.
"Names are powerful," River effused softly, "why else would the Doctor hide his name." The Creature raised an eyebrow, indignant at River's attempt of a lecture.
"Indeed, all the more reason to conceal it," she sarcastically jeered. River put down her cup, "From who my dear? From your own words no one knows of your existence. With no threat, why is there a need to hide from anyone." River's reminder of her prisoned state irked her further.
"What does it matter to you?" The Creature leans back in her chair, pulling her long hair back behind her ear. River shrugged, her lips fetched up into that characteristic smirk.
"Nothing beyond my own curiosity," she quipped before scrunching her face in thought, "also perhaps putting a name to a face is more fitting rather than making up names."
Amused, the Creature leaned her forearms on the table, "what kind of names?"
River laughed, "some rather unflattering I'm afraid, but you do live up to them." She raised her mug up as if toasting to the Creature before downing the remains of the liquid.
"Go on then," River continued, "is it a hideous name?"
The Creature paused, her eyes narrowed,"I've forgotten it," she profoundly stated. She was lying, but River didn't seem to know, for the bright quirk in her eyes vanished and was replaced with a solemn stare.
"To have forgotten your name means you have forgotten yourself." Her voice had grown quiet; the whispered words were a heavy condemned verdict. Solemness didn't seem to fit well on her face, it made the Creature squirm inwardly, annoyed.
"I am who I am," she briskly stated, "who I used to be is nothing to what I am now. My name now has little relevance."
Intrigued, River raised an eyebrow, "who were you before?"
The Creature leaned back in her chair, letting out a tired sigh. "Why the sudden interest?"
River smirked, "why evade my question with a question?"
The Creature leaned back into her chair shaking her head, an exasperated smile twisting her lips.
"I don't understand your need to know me," her eyes narrowed as she assessed River, "what are you after?"
"It's a simple question, why are you so persistent to avoid it?" River pressed.
"You want to know who I was? You call that a simple question? More like an interrogation," the Creature snapped.
"Do you even remember who you were?" River continued to ask.
"What's it to you?" She hissed.
"Course you remember," River whispered, "I heard you talking. Heard you refer yourself as one and the same as Clara. Where you a past companion?"
A fire grew somewhere deep in the Creature's veins. Her eyes sparked, the yellow in them turning to molten gold.
"And if I was?" She growled dangerously, her lips pressed back to reveal her teeth.
"Well it would explain your obsession with him."
"My obsession?" The Creature spat the word like it was foul in her mouth.
"Its in your eyes. You hide it well, and it took me long enough to figure it out, but he meant something to you...back then."
The Creature pressed a hand underneath her chin, her face a blank canvas so as to keep River from making more deductions. "You assume too much." She said after a moment of silence.
"But I'm not wrong. I think you even loved him once, or still do."
A sardonic smile twisted the Creatures lips, "even if I did, much good it would do me now, or ever for that matter."
River pressed her lips together, "what were you to him?" she asked slowly.
"Afraid I could have meant something to him?" The Creature taunted.
River laughed, "if you did, whatever you were supposedly, is long since forgotten."
Any trace of a smile snapped off the Creatures face, "whereas you will always be remembered?"
The fire in her words burned through the air, and River acknowledged the frantic anger radiating in the Creatures gold eyes, she had struck a hidden emotion the Creature had fought to conceal.
"You think he cares to remember what pains him most?" the Creature seethes, "You are no different from the likes of his companions, as soon as you're gone, he will wipe you from his memory, and be forgotten just like the rest."
"How little you know him. He never forgets, he always remembers what is important to him." River stated pointedly.
"Important..." she trails off, eyes fixed on a distant memory, "so you assume I was dismissed for lack of importance. Do you honestly believe you are so different from his companions that you are the most important?"
"No one who travels with him is unimportant; however there are certain degrees of importance. I have never been his companion. Believe it or not, like it or not, I am different. I am his wife." River's calm voice scraped past her ears, she ground her teeth.
"His wife," the Creature scoffed, "and have you forgotten that I have seen everything? I've witnessed it all, to you killing him, to your so called marriage. You never truly married him, it never happened. The year was erased don't you recall? And further, you didn't even marry the real man, just the shell of what looked like him. You can pretend all you wish Miss Song, at least you can find solace in a fantasy." Her words were cruel, but she regretted not a word. Their eyes remained locked on each other, daring the other to look away.
"You can't let it go can you?" River's voice seemed to echo in the small room. "He has forgotten you and you can't let it go."
"Again you assume there is something to forget," the Creature snarled, "but he does forget, or at least tries to. I've seen companions come and go, as soon as one falls another arrives, and so the cycle continues. Another face, another companion to keep him company, they are all the same. Important as they are, they all serve the same purpose. You are just like them. And when the pain becomes too much you will be gone from his mind."
River remains silent, her eyes steadily tracking the Creature's movements. The Creature sighed, "if you go as so far as to put the entire universe into jeopardy for the sake of his life, don't you think that by forgetting the painful memories, and the people in those memories, will save his sanity?"
"Whats left of it," River added, her eyes downcast, but a slight lift of her mouth teased a grin. River waited a moment before asking, "what should I call you then?"
The Creature shrugged. "What ever you wish." She glanced down at the yellow roses, and for whatever reason changed her mind.
"Wait..."
But, when she looks up, River is gone.
