Thanks for your patience lovely readers!
The Doctor glances back at them, frowns a little, then shakes his head, "never mind that, grab her a blanket and some of these too," he says, waving what she recognizes as an Asgardian heating pad at them. The Asgardian walks off, muttering under his breath about bossy little hairless not-humans and blue lips.
"Here Mo," he says, "sit under the blanket with Clara."
She does, and the other Asgardian, apparently older by the lightness of the fur around his eyes, presses a warm mug made for much larger hands into hers. It tastes as lovely as she remembers.
It had tasted even better in the Doctor's mouth, but she's not thinking about that right now.
Fifteen minutes later, Clara is covered in a pile of blankets and heating pads and River is trying not to brush off the slightly smaller pile they've loaded her down with as she grows uncomfortably warm. Clara had woken up briefly, just long enough to make sure she would be alright and get a few sips of the warm Asgardian beverage down her throat before she drifted off again. The Doctor's spirits had lifted considerably after that, the tension drained out of his shoulders. There's a relieved little spring to his step as he bounces over to the reception desk where the hospitable Asgardian staff had retreated earlier to reserve them proper rooms. River takes the opportunity to shove a couple of the blankets away, breathing a sigh of relief. Next to her, Clara looks much better, warm color slowly flooding back into her cheeks and lips. River runs her fingers through Clara's hair affectionately, smiling.
"Two rooms!" The Doctor announces, the younger Asgardian trailing behind him, "nice rooms too, I think you'll be quite pleased," he hooks his thumbs in his suspenders and looks at her proudly.
"I'd better be, considering the way the day's gone so far." She doesn't quite manage to put the usual amount of annoyance in her tone though, and he seems to notice, because his smug little grin hardly fades.
The young Asgardian scoops Clara up easily, cradling her in one arm and wrapping the draping blankets around her with the other. Apparently she finds him comfortable, because she sighs happily and buries her face in the fur at his neck. River hears her mutter the name of her childhood dog and fights back a smile as the Asgardian strains his neck to look at her in confusion.
The hotel is very much like the one they had stayed in, despite the 100 years or so between the one they are currently in and the building of the other on the hillside where they had their picnic. She can see little stylistic changes here and there, but the most notable parts are the same. The lift is comparable to the size of a hotel lift on earth, but the ceiling is almost startlingly high and rises to a smoothly rounded arch, much like the hallways and the rooms themselves. The whole place is lit through the walls and ceilings, lovely swirling patterns set into them that glow in a way that reminds River of Christmas lights. And he's with her. Not the way he was last time, of course, his arm around her waist, or his hand resting against the small of her back, his face glowing like the walls when he looks at her. But at least he's there, walking next to her, less distance between them then the length of her arm.
The Doctor takes his door code from the Asgardian, but insists he doesn't need to be shown the way, hovering around as their guide settles Clara down on the bed and thoughtfully pulls a step stool out of a closet. River takes advantage of it as the door closes behind him, climbing up next to Clara and making sure the blankets are tucked up around her chin. Behind her the Doctor stretches up to rest his folded arms on the edge of the bed and his chin on his arms, watching them.
"She'll be alright," he says.
River nods, pulling her knees to her chest and sitting against the pillows.
"Have you always had such a high tolerance for cold?" he asks, and she flinches internally, wishing he'd forgotten about it as she'd hoped he would.
Kicking herself for being distracted and not thinking up a better cover story earlier she quickly thinks of something to tell him. "When I was a little girl, my parents moved us to Siberia for a few years."
"Siberia…." He echoes, and she can hear the disbelief in his voice.
"Yeah, Siberia. My mom was in journalism, it was for an assignment. I don't remember it much."
"How old were you?" he asks, and she can hear the edge of suspicion in his voice. She shrugs, casually,
"I don't know, 3 or 4? Does it matter?"
"Clara said you live in New York."
"That's right," she tells him, a little defensively, "for school. I live with my American uncle."
"How did your uncle come to be American?"
"He's my second uncle, and was born there," she snaps, "what's with the sudden interest in my life story?"
"Why are you so defensive?" he narrows his eyes, studying her closely.
"Because I don't like you, and I don't like the way you're asking!" She glares at him, he huffs at her and turns around, studying the room with his back to her. Her hearts are beating fast with confrontation and worry, and there's the faintest stirring again from the baby rising in the back of her mind. She turns her head away from him and squeezes her eyes closed, drawing up images of Rory in his Raggedy Doctor costume until a smile curls her lips.
"Hey," says the Doctor, and she turns back to see he'd moved over to a window, and he's looking at her with a grin, their argument moments before apparently forgotten, "do you want to see something amazing?"
"Depends what you mean by 'amazing'", she tells him, making finger quotes in the air.
"Oh come on Miss Grumpy Pants, even you won't be able to not like this, I promise!" his eyes are practically sparkling, which doesn't actually mean much since she's seen him respond in a similar way to ridiculous hats and carnivorous plants.
"Please?" he says, dropping his head and looking up at her through the flop of hair that falls across his forehead. She's never been able to say no to that face.
With a sigh she swings over the side of the bed and slides carefully to the floor. He bounces over, grabs her by the elbow and starts for the balcony doors. They stop before going through, the Doctor swinging in front of her to stand between her and the door. "Close your eyes."
"No."
"You have to!" he whines, moments away from stomping his foot.
"Why?"
He sighs, clearly exasperated and runs a hand through his hair, "Just this once Mo, trust me just this much?" he holds up his fingers with a tiny sliver of space between them, squinting at her from between them with one eye.
"For how long?" she asks him, relenting.
"Ten seconds! You can count them."
She sighs, nods, and closes her eyes, loudly declaring, "One!"
His hand slips under her elbow again, but he crowds closer than before, directing her through the doorway. When she breathes in she can smell him, and his body warms the air at her side. She fights the urge to lean into him, quickly saying, "Two!" He shushes her, tells her to count quietly, please, she's ruining the moment.
She's only gotten to five when he tells her she can open her eyes.
The gasp that fizzles out of her throat sounds less like amazement and more like heartbreak and memories. He doesn't seem to notice though, and she hears smugness in his voice as he launches into an explanation of Asgard's atmosphere.
"So," he says, taking a step that brings him shoulder-to-shoulder with her, "this is what you get," he makes a grand sweeping motion with his arm, encompassing the sky beyond the glint of the energy field holding back the cold, lit up with dancing colors.
"It… looks like the northern lights," she manages, hearing a suspicious catch to her voice.
"Hhhmmm, well yeah, same basic idea. Only, you know, nightly. And everywhere, not just in the north."
"Oh," she says, trying not to think about how those lights had looked flickering across the bare slope of his shoulder, framing the silhouette of his face.
"Um," he shifts uncomfortably beside her, his hand scratching his cheek, and she realizes with a start that she's crying.
"Sorry, sorry," she says, quickly, "it's nothing, just remembering, you know, Siberia."
"Siberia, right. It's such an emotional place."
"Knock it off would you? It was a very special time for me. With my family, I mean, and we saw the Northern lights. I was just….remembering," she swipes at her cheek with her sleeve, frustrated with herself. Clearly she's out of practice with the whole acting in emotional situations bit. And she's pregnant. She's yet to find anything that mentions Time Lord pregnancies and the tendency to become overly emotional, but maybe that's just a given. Or maybe it's whatever bit of human there is left in her making itself known. Or maybe it's just him, bothersome man that he is, always causing problems. Always.
She tells herself later that it's her annoyance with him that causes her to ask The Question, a passive-aggressive strike against him in response to his inadvertent stirring up of memories. Conveniently, it also distracts him completely from Mo and her Siberian experiences.
"Have you been here before?"
He stiffens beside her. She watches him out of the corner of her eye, but she can't quite manage to read his face. He takes a few steps forward, his fingers wrapping around the elaborate (if awkwardly high) balcony railing.
"Yes," he says after a moment, "I've been here a few times."
His arms wrapping around her waist from behind, his chin nestling into her shoulder. "What are you doing out here?"
"Just watching. It's beautiful."
"You can see it fine from the bed. Have you seen the size of our windows? It's practically a fish bowl in there."
"Really Sweetie? A fish bowl?" she tugs teasingly at the tie around her waist, "Maybe I should keep my robe on in the future."
"That's a terrible idea," he tells her, one hand drifting pointedly under her robe to settle around her ribcage, his thumb stroking gently.
She laughs softly, leaning back against him as he murmurs, "come back to bed" against her neck.
"In a moment, just stay here and watch with me for a moment, would you?"
"Fine," he pouts at her, his chin settling back on her shoulder. "You can see this every night anyway, you know. It's not like earth."
She sighs, "That's not really the point."
"Oh alright, but only five minutes."
"Such a child."
"Oi! Rude! That is not something you ought to be saying to your husband on you first ever linear wedding anniversary!"
"You must really like it then, to keep coming back," she fights to keep the strain out of voice, watching the tense line of his shoulders and the grip of his fingers.
"I did yeah," he says, "I think it's getting a bit old though, probably won't come back."
"But, It's very beautiful," she argues, weakly.
"There are a lot of beautiful things in the universe, Mo. No point in going back to the same one over and over again," he turns around briskly, "Well I'm off then. Night-time here is ten hours, so sleep as much as you'd like. Or don't, whatever you'd like. Breakfast tomorrow, they deliver if you ask them to, then we'll figure out how to get the Tardis open and take off, yeah?"
She's barely started nodding and he's striding past her, "Right then, good night, shout if you need anything," and he's gone.
The silence in his wake is deafening.
She finds herself re-tracing his steps, standing where he'd been, wrapping her own fingers around the balcony railing. The rainbow lights flicker, suddenly somehow melancholy, chasing strains of color across her fingers.
No point in going back to the same one over and over again.
But he had. He's brought her here that time, when they'd realized that for once, they were linear, celebrating the same anniversary. They'd dragged it out, spent a whole week celebrating that anniversary. She hadn't realized then that it was a repeat for him. Hadn't realized until that terrible and lovely day when he's showed up at her picnic with his young face and confusion and traced his eyes along the curve of her leg with a new-found fascination. She knew now, that it had only been the second time he'd met her. And she'd died that first time.
"I want you to remember this," he whispered, holding her face between his hands, his eyes staring into hers meaningfully, "remember this, River Song, right now, me and you, together, on Asgard."
Through the tears that had again found their way out of her eyes, she can't help but laugh a little. He'd been thinking, of course, of the picnic, long ago for him but in her immediate future. He'd left her with a far more permanent reminder than he'd realized though. One hand drifts down to cover her apparently-flat-but-not-really stomach. No chance she's ever be able to forget it now would she? He'd move on though, he always did. He already had, in a lot of ways.
"There are a lot of beautiful things in the universe, no point in going back," she murmurs, and straightens her shoulders.
River stays on the balcony, watching the flickering lights. She tells the baby a story about a polar bear from a children's book she'd found in Anthony's attic between phone calls with Clara. She's pretty sure she gets a few of the details wrong. When she's done she closes her eyes and takes all the memories of him and her "together on Asgard" and puts them in a little box in her head. They're still there, of course, but between them and her are his blank, not-knowing-her eyes and Charlotte's little fingers tucked into hers and a cold hospital window. Another lifetime. A different face. She can compartmentalize too, thank you very much.
She leaves the balcony and closes the door behind her. She closes the curtains over the windows (smaller than the fish-bowl room) too, and finds her way through the darkened room to climb into bed next to Clara. Clara's breathing is slow and deep, and River strokes her fingers through Clara's hair until she falls asleep.