a/n: I seriously love this show. Please enjoy the following semi-canon, derived partially from Dragonphobia.
freedom to know eternity
The sadness will last forever.
Vincent van Gogh
i.
Dragon's shadow is bigger than him.
Jane only notices this when they're flying patrol. Her eyes trace the shape following them on the ground so far below, and a faint memory tickles her bones – "So much nothing between here and there," she'd whispered, more scared and alive than she could ever want – she teeters on the edge of realization – but it falls away as soon as Dragon opens his snout and whoops with sheer joy. The powerful cords of muscle along his snakelike body curl with exertion as they cut through the sky, and behind her wide-open eyes, Jane knows what it is to be free.
She joins him in one long wail, the happiest they've ever been, Jane and her Dragon, Dragon and his Jane; his shadow slips from her mind in light of the pure sun, and Jane draws back safely from that abyss with a gasp.
"Anything wrong?" Dragon shouts over the roar of the wind.
She flicks his ear gently. "I'm fine," she says, and she is.
Nothing can go wrong.
ii.
Jane cries a lot. Dragon is the only one who knows.
Nobody would guess that the headstrong young girl, brave and capable and promising to be one of the greatest knights in the kingdom, would cry at all, let alone that much. But Jane does cry, with great gusting sobs or soft weeping, as though tears are the only language that can ever say anything important.
To give her credit, it is not easy to make her cry. Jane is indeed brave and capable and young, with a skin as thick as her best friend's, which is quite a feat considering that her best friend is a dragon.
Jane only cries about big things, like the way Jester looks at her when he thinks she doesn't know, or the way Gunther shows up to sparring practice littered with bruises she didn't put there. She cries every time her father waits for her to come home safely, and when her mother's lips tighten with every dress Jane refuses to wear. She cries when Pepper adds roasted vegetables to the fish, and when Rake's rugged face lights up for his favorite dinner. She cries when she sees her little majesty Princess Lavinia skip by, traces of lavender in her wake, and the tender smile the King wears when he looks at his people, magnificent and brilliant as his crown.
She only cries about the big things, the things that cannot be felt any other way.
And of course, she cries about Dragon.
Dragon isn't sure how he feels about that.
"I'm sorry," she whispers, curled between his forepaws. His eyes swivel down to regard the carrot-top head. Her head is about as big as his claw. This observation makes him uneasy; he hates being faced with how inevitably human she is.
"It wasn't your fault," he reminds her gently.
"It was," she sobs and sobs. "I forgot you, Dragon. How could I do that?" The frustration and pain in her voice is evident, unendurable pain for hurting him.
Dragon's heart hurts. I don't deserve a friend like you, he thinks, he knows.
"You're a shortlife," he says, and it's so true it burns. "I was the idiot who let you eat those berries. For future reference, stay away from purple berries that smell oddly like cheese. Not Pepper's cheese either. Probably the kind of cheese that would happen if Smithy tried cooking. Or that fellow with the weird hat."
She snorts lightly at his attempt at humor. "So, crime against nature?"
In the dark, she can't see his sad smile. "Unforgivable."
Jane wipes the last of her tears. Curls against him, the impossibly frizzy poofball that is her hair cradled in the curve of his neck. "I'm sorry," she repeats softly. "I never meant to hurt you, Dragon."
But he can see hers.
"It's okay, Jane," he assures her, and it is.
iii.
The day Theodore dies, Dragon takes Jane to the sea.
The flight takes hours, for which she is grateful; the sting of the slipstream puts tears in her eyes without any effort of her own, so she can lay her face into his scales for hours, with nothing but the wind and sky and sun to remind her of what it is to be human.
(Pain, pain, pain.)
But he can never forget. His scales can't sense her tears dripping onto them, but he can feel them, eating and corroding their way into the bones of his spine. Bleakly, Dragon wonders why he ever thought it was a good idea to let this little girl into his life.
They land on a bright, gorgeous beach, which Dragon immediately hates. His claws sink into the suddenly not-so-solid ground with a sensation not unlike vertigo, and he nearly growls with frustration as the sand creeps into his scales. It's going to take weeks to wash this out, but he doesn't complain too much because his scales are still wet with her grief.
"The sea," she breathes.
Jane slips off his broad, green back, and nearly squeals as her foot sinks through the nearly liquid ground. "Dragon, what is this?"
"Sand," he replies, smug in his knowledge.
Her eyes are round. "Entire acres of it! What do they do with it all?"
He shrugs, a dragonish wiggle of leathery wings. "Make castles, I guess."
"Castles," she repeats, wondering. He can see in her mind's eye an image of her own castle, cast in sand and water and twinkling blue lights. It must be weak, but beautiful.
They settle down at the water's edge because Dragon's muscles are cramping from the long flight – "I'm fine," he insists, and she taps his twitching wings with a sardonic look that makes him snort – and it's kind of beautiful out here, with all that nothing between one coast and the next. The waters of the Earth wash over them, boiling hot, then sluice away as easily as dreams, leaving them shivering with cold and slightly less disillusioned.
Jane leans against his snout in a practiced movement, the one that signals that she is about to say something important.
"Sir Theodore once told me that the sea is nothing but the library of all the tears in history."
He mulls it over calmly. The old knight's wisdom had often won Dragon's respect in the brief burst of life he'd known him; there is no reason to doubt this last legacy. Dragon looks out over the rolls of water, endless as the abyss of time he must one day face.
If what Sir Theodore said is true, then how much of this water came from her, in moments of weakness and strength? He raises a claw and contemplates the droplets clinging stubbornly to the deadly weapon, sparkling with an airy light that belies its guilt. All the drops of this ocean have withstood the test of time, transcended it even, bore witness to the sorrows of the world they are utterly removed from and collected its tears as evidence. Will he one day do the same?
("I'm sorry, Dragon," Jane whispers, scared and brave. "I'm sorry." She will say it more than once during her lifetime, and once more at the end of it.)
He shakes the water off, suddenly somber. They watch the droplets slide back to join the sea at their feet. How much of them will come from him, when he is old and alone and unable to die?
"Let's go, Dragon," Jane says abruptly.
"Already?" he says lightly.
She hugs his snout. "Thank you for bringing me here. I – I think it had exactly what I needed. But I don't really like it much." She has mourned her beloved mentor; her forehead furrows. "The sky is better," she says, a slight smile lifting her features.
His mouth curls, because this ordinary, carrot-topped shortlife is utterly priceless. I sure know how to pick them, he thinks fondly, curling his tail around her and clinking gently against her armored skirt. Sometimes he wonders how he'll be able to live without his best friend, when she is one day dead and gone, as all shortlives will one day be. This is one of those times, pure and bright and hopeless in the blue light shining off the sky and sea, and Dragon feels himself teeter on the edge of that abyss that must, one day, claim him.
Jane's face against his scales brings him back; Jane's tears anchor him to her. He feels them, and her, and she is wonderful.
"I worry about you," she mumbles, absently patting his nose. "When I'm gone, I mean."
He swallows against the lump in his throat. "Don't," he finally says. "There's no reason to."
"Of course not, windbag." She punctuates with a tug on his ear, letting him know she's feeling slightly insulted. "We'll find the dragons by then. But who's going to make you exercise? You'll get chubby without patrol, you know."
He knew what he was doing all along. Letting the girl-knight into his life was the best decision he ever made. Dragon looks into Jane's drying green eyes and knows that as long as they are friends, the abyss will remain hungry; the look on her face tells him that they will be friends forever. Humans, he thinks bleakly, gratefully, love, love, love.
"Oy," he replies, without missing a beat. "Who's the one who sneaked an entire cake last night, huh? Who?"
She giggles and snorts in the same breath. "Just fly, you overgrown lizard," she says affectionately.
Just fly. It is a good philosophy, Dragon thinks, a little proudly. Properly dragon, that.
He's taught her well.
When you run with the Doctor, it feels like it'll never end. But however hard you try you can't run forever. 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.
River Song