"Still my river—and your river
still my hand—and your hand
will never join, or not until
one dawn catches up another dawning."
~Marina Tsvetaeva (tr. Elaine Feinstein), from "Poems for Blok: 5
She and Margary part ways on the street corner, promising to meet for lunch on Saturday, and she heads on alone. It's a bit of a bizarre life now, living normal, teaching archaeology at the university, and she isn't sure that she'll ever get used to it. Ah well—she's still hiring out as a free-lance archaeologist on the side, and someone had already contacted her just yesterday, a soft-faced, flint-eyed businessman named Lux.
She still isn't sure whether she'll take the job, but a library with four thousand and twenty-two vanished people?
Sounds exciting.
It's a calm night. The lights from the university gather up behind her, rising high over the city as she makes her way down towards home. Fog curls around the edges of the buildings and street-lamps; the designers of the bio-dome had tried to replicate Earth as much as possible. So the fake sky is blue, and the grass is green, but at night there are more stars than anywhere on Earth, now with its city-countries and smoke stacks rising up into the sky. Colonizing the galaxy takes sacrifice, and Earth had borne the brunt of that sacrifice. (Although the history books will never tell.)
Once she reaches the park wedged in the middle of the university complex, she slips off her heels one by one, catching the back straps with her fingers to dangle them in her hand.
She walks barefoot through the grass.
There are plenty of students out tonight, carousing under the light of too many stars. A few of them say hello to their professor, but most are too entwined with each other to notice. So she is free to tilt her head back, look past the trees to the sky. Yes: too many stars for Earth, but just enough for the moon. Not even the bio-dome can really block them out. She is reminded of that first night out with the Doctor, after everyone had finally left her alone, after she had lied so often she almost believed the lies herself.
Yes, I killed him, but I had no choice.
I was only doing what I was programmed to do.
I loved him.
(That last one was only a lie because it was in the past tense, but they weren't to know that.)
And never in her wildest dreams had she expected him to come for her. Never. Twelve thousand consecutive life sentences, one night after another, and the shock thrilling through her heart when she'd heard the TARDIS—that was real, so real.
No. She wasn't expecting him at all, but he came anyway.
How quintessential of him. How beautifully quintessential. He'd taken her to see the giant silver tree, and the golden leaves bigger than houses, and all the myriad of stars.
What a night that was.
The grass is silver cold under her feet. Across the bridge, over the pond with the ducks. Home is on the other side.
It's a modest affair, out of the way, right on the edge of the park. Someplace where the university can keep an eye on her, someplace where she isn't actually in the city proper. She may be a professor now, but once upon a time there was a woman who killed a doctor.
She places her key in the lock of her front door. "Hi, honey," he says. His voice is low, a husked whisper, falling across the distance the porch creates between them. "I'm home."
Of course she'd known he was there; she's a highly trained assassin raised to kill him, after all. No, he doesn't surprise her.
But him actually being here, at her door, now that does.
She turns. He's leaning against the porch railing, smirking at her, top hat tipped precariously jaunty on top of his head. "And what sort of time do you call this?" she teases back, allowing a smile to form. Because if he's calling her honey, even in jest, that means at least he's done the Pandorica. Specific dates on where they both are in each other's time stream is always trickier than the bigger picture, the larger landmarks. Pandorica. Wedding. Demon's Run. Berlin. Trenzalore. Byzantium. Asgard. The signposts that mark their life.
He smiles back at her, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes, not really. Fear grips her, swift and sudden, and she takes a half step toward him, her hearts slamming double-beat in her chest. "Sweetie? Is everything alright? A-Amy and Rory—they're okay?"
"No, no, Amy and Rory are alright. They're good." And still he just stares at her. She takes another step forward, gaze scanning his face. He's tired, she can see that right off; there're dark circles under his eyes, and his face is lined with worry, for all the new suit. How many weeks has he gone without sleep?
"Sweetie?" she asks again, voice rising in concern. "What's the matter? When are you? Where are Amy and Rory?"
He doesn't say anything for a moment. His face is shadowed by the brim of his hat. Just as she is getting ready to march over to him and demand what's going on, timelines be damned, he crosses the porch in two long strides, grabs her by the shoulders, pulling her to him, and he kisses her.
For a moment she fights him, because—because how old is he? And then it simply doesn't matter anymore, because the Doctor is crying. The Doctor. Crying. The salt from his tears stains the kiss. She's crying too.
"I love you," he tells her between kisses. "I love you. I love you."
She's laughing and sobbing into his mouth. "I love you too," she tells him. They pull away from one another for a moment; his arms are around her waist, his thumbs lightly circling the small of her back.
"You're crying," she says, cupping his face in her hands, brushing the tears from his cheeks. "Why are you crying?"
"I always cry at beautiful things," he says. "I've learned to appreciate them whenever I can." Then his mouth slants over hers again, tasting the color of her lipstick; she buries her hands into his hair, and she doesn't care how old or how young he is, because this is—
because he's hers. Always, always hers.
Always.
He's holding her so wonderfully tightly. "When—When are we for you? When?" she gasps against his mouth, because she has to be sure.
He pulls back just enough to look her in the eyes. "Happy birthday, wife. I was thinking, for your birthday present—how would you like to hear towers sing, eh?"
"It's you," she whispers, her smile so wide as to split open the stars. "It's you."
Her husband.
"It's me," he agrees, and he's smiling too, through his tears.
And River has never been happier.
end.