"When I saw you, I was afraid to meet you . . . When I met you, I was afraid to kiss you . . . When I kissed you, I was afraid to love you . . . Now that I love you, I'm afraid to lose you." ~ Anon

"You could come with us."

For a moment she can't breathe, and she looks at him and wonders: is this when it all starts for him? He can barely look at her, but he's offering her access into the most tender, secret bits, the parts that only his friends are allowed to see. The TARDIS is impenetrable on the outside, but on the inside even the most accidental slip can end reality.

The Doctor guards the TARDIS's heart more jealously than any husband, and he's offering River a piece of it.

How young is he, really?

She isn't willing to take any chances, though. Not with something as important as them. So she just smiles at him and says, "I escape often enough, thank you."

She remembers the first time she'd escaped. It had been with him, and it hadn't taken her long to figure out that while it was her wedding night it certainly wasn't his. Snogging him may have had something to do with discovering that little fact. The stars and the tree had still been beautiful, though, and she had come back to prison to find her husband waiting for her with a smile.

"Besides, I have a promise to live up to," she adds, reaching out to straighten the small crook in his bow tie.

"River: take one end of this, wrap it around your hand, and hold it out to me." She takes the bow tie from him, too shaken by him yelling at her to do much else than obey.

"What am I doing?" she wonders, and he tells her, "As you're told." They wrap and wrap the grey and silver bow tie round and round, she her right, he his left. It is a cool, smooth river under her hands, and its thin silk.

The Doctor's telling Dad to do something, say something. "I consent and gladly give." Why are those words so bone achingly familiar?

He turns to Amy, who's staring at them, a fixed, determined expression on her face. Mother, River thinks. At least one of them knows what's going on besides the Doctor. "I need you to say it too," he tells her. The look on his face is slightly pleading and slightly scared. He can't quite seem to look River in the eye when he adds, "Mother of the bride."

Oh.

Oh. Bride. (She remembers, quite suddenly, being forced to attend the wedding of herself and the Raggedy Doctor out in the backyard when they were all eight, because Mels'd simply refused to marry Rory. Breathless with laughter, because Rory was officiating the ceremony instead and couldn't get a single word right, she pressed the Play-doh lips of the Doctor to hers. "There now!" she declared, pulling back with a smack. She felt a vicious little thrill running through her middle: Mum and Dad were here and Anna was not and Mels had married him. Hah. "We're married," she declared triumphantly, and Amy threw crumbled bits of saltines because Amy's mum wouldn't let them use the rice. And then a giant eye had attacked the wedding party . . .)

A bride. He really wants to marry her? Really and truly? She looks at him, dizzy. His gaze is fixed on hers now, and all of that panic has been replaced by a determination that thrills right through her.

("When I was little I wanted to marry you."

"Good idea. Let's get married. You stay alive and I'll marry you. Deal? Deal."

Deal, she remembers thinking fuzzily, and she made some quip about parents and pennies before everything was lost in the golden haze of regeneration and new bodies and programming.)

"Now River, I'm about to whisper something in your ear and you have to remember it very carefully and tell no one what I said." And then his voice, crackling dry and low against her skin as he leans forward to whisper four little words. And they aren't River, I love you.

But none of that has happened for him yet. Now, here, he's looking at her, so young, and he has that funny little wrinkle between his eyebrows that he gets when he's confused about something. To smooth out that wrinkle, she adds, "You'll understand soon enough." The wrinkle shoots up the other way as he raises his eyebrows at her.

"Okay. Up to you," he tells her, and that just isn't fair.

If it were up to her he would know every language of her heart. Every single one.

No secrets.

No spoilers.

He's turning away from her, blabbing on about something stupid like calling him if she ever needs to, and all she can hear is what he's not saying. The Doctor may be young, but he is smart. Call me, because I won't be calling you. I won't know to call you. It's all beginning and ending here.

And she's ending, cracking into a thousand little pieces, because the one thing that he's always, always done—he's not—he's just walking away. Just like that.

Please. Oh please no. Not yet.

"What?" she blurts out. "That's it? What's the matter with you?"

Please oh please oh please no.

He turns back towards her, a smug grin on his face. She could almost weep with relief as he teases, "Have I forgotten something?"

No. He is just being the biggest flirt. He's horrible at it, bless, but he does try so.

"Oh shut up," she tells him. Relief. Relief. Relief. Her grin is so wide as to split open the sky. She pulls him forward and presses her smile to his lips.

And it's all wrong. It's right, though, because it's always right, kissing the Doctor. The taste of his mouth, sliding cool over her teeth, and the soft wet press of the kiss itself, and the way they fit together. They've always fit together. The rough weave of his tweed rubs her arms as she slides her hands around his waist, and he's not touching her, not really. Not in all those little touches that a husband and wife know to commune their bodies dancing to the salsa beat of hearts and souls.

Yes. It's a right, sure thing, kissing the Doctor. But it's all wrong. She can feel it, in the way he trembles with the not touching. Even still, they let go at the same time.

"Right. Okay. Interesting," and he scratches his cheek.

Interesting? Interesting? She snogs him, and all he has to say is interesting? If her heart wasn't breaking she'd be insulted.

"What's wrong? You're acting like we've never done that before."

"We haven't."

And just like that, she knows: her husband is lost to her forever. It's something like a death, only worse, because he's right there. Only he's not.

He's not.

He's not.

"We haven't?" she echoes, voice stretched taut and thin and incredulous.

"Oh, look at the time. Must be off." His watch has never worked. He just wears it for because. "But it was nice. It was good. Unexpected . . ." She can only stand there as he leaves, as he tears down the colorful party streamers and pops all the balloons.

Celebration over.

". . . but you know what they say: 'There's a first time for everything.'" And in his haste to leave her he runs into the door. He manages to get it open eventually, and looks at her one last time, giving a half hearted grin.

Then he's gone.

River crumbles. Her grip on the bars of her cell is the only thing that keeps her standing. "And a last time," she tells the empty air, and the time line of her life stretches before her, cold and empty and without any love from the Doctor in it at all. She can see it, with that innate Time Lord bit of her brain. The wolf lurking just out of the corner of your eye; he digs up the bones of their marriage and gobbles them right up.

Because she will never be able to tell the Doctor the language of her heart again. Not ever.

Not ever.

(I)

love

[you.]

to be concluded. ~madis