Running To You
11th Doctor/River Song
G
Summary: I'm running to you and Rory before you fade from me. - River finds out the Doctor has been going back to see the Ponds. (7x04 'The Power Of Three', post-'Angels Take Manhattan')
Disclaimer: Not my characters. This has been a disclaimer.
AN: AN: "Every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end ... But not always in that order." – That was said in a Series 7A Trailer and it makes more sense now than it did then. It's a pretty good guess that The Doctor had already lost the Ponds in Manhattan by the time the episode 'The Power Of Three' happened so that's where this is fic is stemming from.
He's been trying to learn more about the little cubes that have appeared on Earth. They've been dealt with, but he still wanted to work them out some more, just to be thorough. He couldn't chance leaving them there with his Ponds about, so he took the little black boxes with him. He couldn't bear letting anything happen to them. Not again.
He's missed them so much since Manhattan, and so helplessly. He's actually convinced himself that it was worth the risk to go back in time, to where they were living and there. He only wishes it wouldn't hurt so much to look at them for too long. They clocked that something was wrong, they wouldn't be Rory and Amy if they hadn't, but they hadn't tried to suss it out of him.
Static catches his ear and his hearts warms at the familiar sound, knowing that company has just arrived.
"Hello, sweetie."
"Wife! I was wondering when you'd pop in!" The Doctor turns his attention to River and actually fumbles the cube in hand, blanching as it clatters loudly on the console floor.
River was wearing high heels and a bright red party dress. Her dress was far too tight and far too short, and it clung far too perfectly to her every curve. From the look of her, she'd been doing something she probably wasn't supposed to be doing, just before she used her vortex to get to the Tardis. For once, her gun was strapped to her side.
"Busy day, dear?" He managed to squeak out, damn the woman. He was no blushing schoolboy and yet she did this to him every single time.
"You'll know about it," River winks, curls sprung wilder than he's seen them as of late, hair all over the place like the mad spacey thing it was. "Miss me?"
"Always," he answers. He watches her disarm her weapon easily before removing her heels. "Fancy a warm meal?"
A soft smile spread across River's face while she took off her earrings, "I am a bit peckish, now that you're offering."
"Dinner it is then," he knew just the place.
"I'm going to change into something more appropriate because this dress is doing things to you already," she presses a quick kiss to his chin before making to climb the stairs. "And going by our history with dinners, I'll need you less cross-eyed just in case we have to make a run for it."
"I do not get cross-eyed, River Song!" He declares with a grimace.
River ignores him and hollers back, "Drive safely, my love!"
Then she's off, her bare feet making little pitter-patter sounds on the Tardis floor.
The Doctor sets the coordinates first before going back to studying the cubes some more. By the time her voice pops up again, he's so caught up he hadn't even noticed her return.
"Doctor, what's this doing here?"
The Doctor looks up and freezes. River is pointing to a jumper that belongs to her mother. He's forgotten to hide it.
After Manhattan, they'd both cleared the Tardis of Amy and Rory's things. They placed all of their belongings that were left behind in a spare room the Tardis created specifically for those mementos. Neither he nor River has stepped into that room since.
"Oh, god," River shook her head. "The way you called me wife, you sounded older. I assumed we were farther off."
"No, River I-"
"Where are you, Doctor?" She asks sternly, watching him very carefully. "Have you," her voice cuts off and she blinks rapidly. He watches her force her tears away and hates himself for it. "Manhattan," she demands, "have you done Manhattan yet?"
"Yes," he answers. He won't lie about that. "I have."
"Then why is this here?" She pointed to Amy's jumper like an accusation, eyes pulling back towards the garment. Shades of agony play over River's face as she reaches a hesitant hand out towards it like she wants to grasp it and never let it go. She goes eerily still, and he knows without a doubt that she's figured him out.
"Oh, god, no. No, you stupid man!" River frowns, "You're going back, aren't you?"
The Doctor licks his lips, needs to properly explain, but River is in his face within seconds, green eyes quickening with fury.
"What in the bloody hell are you thinking?! You can't just run and jump throughout your timeline like some game! It's not only dangerous, it's so, so monumentally careless!"
"River, I'm being careful!" He assures, hands perching on her shoulders, begging for her to understand. "I swear, right to the point. I'm not interfering with any of our timelines whatsoever."
"Have you lost all of your senses?! There's no such thing as being careful enough with us! Sweetie, we are a hopscotch of fixed times, paradoxes, and exploding universes!"
"What's that supposed to mean? It's not worth a little work?"
River shakes her head tiredly, exhausted to the bone. She'd gone out for a 38th-century flash mob and a run, to get her blood up, to stop being cooped up in the Tardis wallowing in her grief.
"You know, as do I," River meets his eye, "that none of this will end well."
"River," the Doctor reaches for her.
"No," she pulls away from his grasp. "You need to promise me right now that you won't do it again! You can't dilute our timelines so selfishly, you can't go swanning off doing whatever the hell you like because you have and time machine and you can, you cannot drop in on my parents ever again!"
"So, I'm just supposed to accept it!?" The Doctor hisses angrily, the question tasting putrid in his mouth.
"Yes!" River shouts back at him. "You impossible imbecile, yes! Don't you think I've wanted to go back too? That I wouldn't give anything! Even, gods," River's breath cuts away and she hiccups around a sob, eyes accusing him where he stands, "Even give up you! Tha - they're my parents, Doctor, but I can't. Because I know why, and so do you!"
River blurs in his eyesight and the Doctor reaches up to rub away the tears he knows he will find there. There were no excuses, no reasoning he could throw at her in ways of justification. It's a selfish sentimentality that's taken root in him, this trip. As it stands now, River not only lost her parents because of him, but now he's making her cry.
River walks over to Amy's sweater. She picks it up and pulls it to her chest.
Melody Pond. He could see it now. The lost little girl looking for her parents. The woman who married him. The woman who died for him.
She pulls up Amy's jumper to smell it and begins to sob.
The Doctor hurries to envelop her in his arms. He whispers apologies into her hair and starts kissing her tears away because she is the last of his Ponds.
He doesn't promise to stop because he knows he won't.
She doesn't make him promise either because she knows it too.