Author's Note:
Hello, everyone.
I know I've not kept up with this story like I've always wanted to and promised I would, but I really think it might be time to give up. Let me explain: I love writing. I do. And I love this fic. I have so much ambition, so many things planned for this story. But I can't write it. I'm too worried about too many things to be of any use to all of you any more. I might as well just leave this here and stop existing.
So this might be the last chapter. Maybe. I don't know. I'm so deeply sorry. Thank you for the support and help through the two years (the longest I've ever kept with anything) of this production. The reviews and contact and engagement have been the most bolstering thing ever to grace my life.
Special thanks to my best friend Brighterthansunflowers (link in bio) for editing this chapter and encouraging me and telling me I can do this. Your kind words and enthusiasm are more than I deserve. It wouldn't be possible without you. I'm sorry I'm such a failure.
(an optimistic) Goodbye, everyone.
"We should run away," the Doctor tells River, whispering under the audible cover of the machines whirring softly around them. Charlotte lay asleep before them.
"What, now?" River looks at him, surprised. "She's just fallen asleep. She'd be alone. The others are at breakfast."
"Yes, now; I don't mean tomorrow, River; if I'd meant that, I would have said it. Specificity is a virtue, you know."
"That's not how it goes, Doctor." River rolls her eyes at him, already growing impatient.
"Yes, it is." He smiles.
"No." She is firm, referring to his suggestion. "We can't leave her. Not now. Not so soon."
She thinks silently about the dangers of travelling now ahead of her, the new and infinite uncertainties that cause her eyes to misfocus and her jaw to clench. She does not alert the Doctor to her further qualms.
"And why not? Nothing interesting is happening. She's getting better. Aren't you bored, Doctor Song?" He pauses, then tempts her with a sideways look, grinning knowingly. "In my experience, you're not one to stay in one place for very long."
River shoots him an annoyed glance, her face burning ever-so-slightly. "I'm making an exception, and I suggest you do as well, because I'm not budging." The finality in her voice does not indicate that she can be convinced.
The Doctor leans in very close, attempting to distract her, to break her iron-clad resolve. She does not look at him, instead studying Charlotte, who's still leaning against the pillows in a sitting position. She keeps her face stern, emotionless, and she can feel his breath, probably smelling of whatever wretched thing he'd just inhaled in the canteen, on her neck. His nose brushes her ear.
"I'll let you drive." It's hardly but a whisper of air against her cheek.
After a shallow pause and a dangerous flash of teeth, River says ambiguously, "That is tempting, I must say... I'll have to think about it."
An incomplete silence fills the room like smoke. It's thick with the whirring of Charlotte's machines and the swirling thoughts of River Song. There are no two simultaneous things that she wants more than for Charlotte to be completely healed with no complicated things to bother with and to dash off into the TARDIS with the Doctor for all eternity.
She wants to forget everything that makes her heart falter in regret and pain.
She wants to forget the Silence (such bitter irony in this desire), which plagued her life unceasingly. Her childhood, damned before she even had a chance to do anything about it.
She wants to forget the Library. The Doctor's face when when he asked her who she was. The slow counting down as she explained to him that her time was over, that he had all of it ahead of him. Dear Charlotte and her illness. Her children, Josh and Ella, who were fabricated by the Library database itself. The Lux Corporation and her crew. She's failed them too often to face them in good spirits at this point anyway.
She wonders briefly where one would place a blow that could erase memory in entirety.
And now, the child.
Her child. Hers and the Doctor's.
Not holding a gun to the Doctor's chest at a lake in Utah, not even serving so many lonely sentences in the prison Stormcage for the very same man, not even the way his face changed, aging backwards, forgetting, every time she saw him brings her as much grief and sadness than this child even now does.
Already, she is so sorry. Sorry for what she knows can not be. Sorry for who she is. For who the Doctor is. She knows they aren't meant to be parents. He's much too unfocused to be happy with a wife and child. It's not in his nature.
She doesn't blame him. She knew it before she even met him: he can't love a family. To do so would be death for them all.
Years before, when she was young and stupid and he was old and melancholy, some time after the Silence, she'd asked him if he'd like to have a baby. The question was quick and inserted expertly into a banterous moment, camouflaged. She was only half-joking.
He'd looked down, swallowing hard, lines forming on his youthful face, aging him before her very eyes. He'd turned to her gravely, old as time, and told her that, yes, he would, but he couldn't. The children on Gallifrey, his own family, had been killed long ago, and he'd let it happen. Lost to war and carnage and his own neglectfulness.
He's carried it with him since, in the back of his mind. Unerasable. Unforgettable. Always there.
And it can't happen again. Children. A family. It can't, River. That's what he'd said, with stone hardening his features and ice in his eyes.
It was the most responsible thing she'd ever heard him say in her life.
And her. It hurts too much to even consider it. River herself, whose childhood was ripped from her, trained into militancy, orphaned. She can't let it happen to her own child. The only way she can love Charlotte is if she reminds herself that the girl is not hers to protect, that she will go home with Strackman Lux to her own family and own time and live a new life where she is loved like a soldier, lost and found, where she is not with River in the cruel existence gifted to her eternally.
River knows that she can't let the same events fall to anyone within her reach. Not ever. Nobody deserves her life. Nobody except her, the murderer of the Doctor, great and powerful. Her Time Lord longevity, she'd always supposed, was her punishment for loving him, for killing him; far more a punishment than Stormcage had ever been to her.
Far more a punishment than all the years of confusion and the profound sense of utter aloneness that had plagued her since the very day she'd fallen to Earth.
A punishment she feels keenly again now that she's been freed from the Library.
The clear voice of Other Dave shatters the silence, faint at first, as he explains the difference between constellations and asterisms to Proper Dave down the hall outside Charlotte's room.
"And it all, 'course, depends on whereabouts you are in the Universe, so it differs from planet to planet; context is rather important…"
River quickly drags her palms across her cheeks, catching the tears that have rolled slowly down each of them. She blinks rapidly, looking away, and the Doctor lays an arm across her shoulders.
She leans into him despite herself.
The door swings inward, and Other Dave ceases his exasperated lecture upon seeing the tranquil scene inside the room. He smiles at River and the Doctor as he steps aside, allowing the other four to crowd the room quietly.
River takes a steadying breath, about to say something rash and of massive importance, something she thinks she should, but close behind the Felman Lux Corporation's former crew is a handful of concerned (or perhaps annoyed) nurses.
River recognises DuBose and Harding and a unifying look of passive irritation.
"Sorry to interrupt so soon, but visiting hours are far over," Nurse Harding speaks. "We can't allow anyone to remain in the room that isn't a family member of Charlotte Lux." She peers briefly at a clipboard, then at Strackman. "Mr. Lux, you're welcome to stay for a bit longer. We're going to run some more testing. Everyone else, it's to the lobby with you." She smiles kindly.
The Doctor stands quickly, but bends to River, whispering. "I'll see you soon. Good luck." He kisses her cheek twice and turns to leave, but she rises and takes his hand, sliding her fingers through his easily. He looks at her, curious.
"It's okay;" she says, "I'll join you. I need to go to TARDIS." A pause. "So do you." Her eyes match her tone.
The Doctor is confused. "I thought you'd made your mind up?"
"Well, I've changed it now. Let's go." She starts for the door.
"I'll stay with her," Strackman Lux chimes absently, sitting in an empty chair adjacent to the bed.
The group relocates to the hallway shortly, leaving the nurses to their work. They begin to retrace their steps through the labyrinth of the hospital, passing Sisters in white and elegant headdresses rushing about like ants.
"So, uh… Doctor…" Proper Dave clears his throat, falling in step with him. The Doctor still holds River's hand as tightly as she holds his, sensing still her silent need for support. They walk closely, her arm pressed against his.
"Hm?"
"This, ah, TARDIS of yours…"
"Yes?"
"All of time and space?"
The Doctor smiles, satisfied. "All of time and space."
Proper Dave laughs lightly. "So, er, seeing as I'm not exactly piloting any ships currently, would you mind terribly much dropping me off somewhere? I've got a girl out there, and I'm dying to know if she's found a bloke better than me yet."
"Not at all, not at all! Anywhere, any time. I'm very skilled, you know." He looks to his wife now as they enter a lift. "River, is that alright with you?"
"Yes, fine." she says absently. "I think I'll sit down for a bit, in the TARDIS." She puts a hand to her head, withdrawing.
"Doctor, if it's not any trouble," Miss Evangelista begins hesitantly, "do you think I could convince you to cab me to New Bristol?"
"No convincing necessary, my dear; it'd be my pleasure. Anyone else?"
The lift doors open to the bottom floor of the hospital, and polite contributions from Other Dave and Anita confirm a short, round-the galaxy trip for the group.
When again in the dimness of the TARDIS, River does not demand to pilot the machine, as the Doctor was hoping she would. Doing so would indicate good spirits. He watches silently as she finds a place in the console room's sole jumpseat instead while he begins to idly flip levers and switches and push buttons.
After a brief thought, she fastens the seat belt across her lap.
"Is she all right?" Anita startles the Doctor from his left.
He glances between the console and River for a moment, thinking. Dark thoughts swirl in his mind, wrought with worry and anxiety and truth.
He lies smoothly, smiling at Anita. "Yes, she's quite well. Worried about Charlotte, I think." He nods, agreeing with the falsehood, and grips a handle on the console tightly.
He addresses the group: "Right. Who's first, crew?"