Chapter Text
“There’s a lamp burning in the window for you, honey.”
“I jumped out that window a long time ago.”
For the first few years, she lives on Luna in eternal hope. Any second, she would tell herself. He’ll come bounding through the door like an overexcited puppy and everything will be put to rights again. She lives her life and doesn't think to worry. The Doctor is always late. But the years pass without a word from him and hope gradually fades. When she loses it entirely, she feels like a little girl again – lost and abandoned, unloved and alone in the universe.
She does what she always does – she squares her shoulders, pushes back the tears and tries to get on with her life. For a while, that means throwing herself into every dangerous situation she can find, desperate to somehow fill the empty space in her chest, that place just between her hearts where love used to be. She’ll take any excuse for violence, to shoot or blow up or just bloody well hit something. For a while, she craves it. She comes home with bloodied knuckles and a bruised, sometimes broken body, dragging herself to her empty bed and curling up there like a wounded child, the tears in her eyes stinging far worse than any injury ever could.
And then just as quickly as it had stolen over her, the bitter anger fades and leaves River hollow. It is no longer just the space between her hearts that feels empty. She struggles more than ever to fill it. She leaves Luna and goes to earth, acquiring a job at Oxford and teaching classes there. She occupies her days with lectures and digs, writing papers and books and snarky notations in the margins of her students final essays. She throws herself into renovating her new house, making it into a home rather than just a place to store her things when the TARDIS isn’t available.
The TARDIS isn’t really an option anymore.
Slowly, she begins again. It isn’t nearly as full or as happy as it might have been with him, but it is a life and one she managed to rebuild without his help. Even when she misses him so much she aches with it, she feels proud of herself for that.
She stopped writing in her journal years ago. It sits gathering dust on a bookshelf because she can’t bring herself to even open it and fondly peruse its pages anymore. Time passes in a tedious blur of classes and house renovations. She gets her thrills by going off on archaeological digs and taking the odd hop into the past or future with her vortex manipulator. She stops trying to call him. He never answers. Most days are unremarkable, coming and going without any real reason to remember them.
It is just such a day when River decides to take her lunch outside instead of eating at her desk in her office. Grades are being posted in a week and students tend to hover outside her door, pestering her about getting their final grade early. She settles her back against the trunk of a tree on campus, curls her legs up beneath her and proceeds to stare at her cafeteria tray with her bottom lip caught between her teeth.
Fish fingers.
Of course.
She prods at one balefully, squinting.
“This seat taken?”
Her eyes slide from her lunch to the pair of shoes standing next to her, scuffed Oxfords with one of the laces half undone. Slowly, she allows her eyes to travel up a pair of long legs in beige trousers, a broad chest in a slightly frayed but clearly expensive jacket, the lunch tray held in big, inelegant hands and finally to a smiling, ruggedly handsome face with kind blue eyes gazing down at her in quiet amusement.
She drops her eyes back to her lunch and says, “I can’t stop you.”
She could if she wanted to.
He sits, settling his back against the tree trunk as well, letting out a content little sigh as his elbow brushes her arm. “I think you could if you wanted to.”
Startled, River lifts her head again and stares.
He grins back at her.
“Yes,” she admits, sliding her arm just out of reach of his wayward elbow. “I definitely could.”
He looks delighted by the admission instead of the appropriate response of terror she usually gets when she says anything remotely threatening in that tone of voice. The voice that used to make the Doctor blush up to his ears and stammer. River shoves away the painful memory and stares at the man’s outstretched hand as he says, “Bruce Baldwin. I teach physics here.”
She looks him right in the eye, making her grip firm and strong. “River Song. Archaeology professor.”
“Seriously?”
She lifts an eyebrow. “Got a problem with archaeology?”
He shakes his head hurriedly, biting into one of his fish fingers. “Not that. Your name.” She frowns and he laughs. “It’s pretty. Just sounds made up – like a name a celebrity would use to check into a hotel or something.” He pauses in chewing, eyeing her suspiciously. “You’re not a celebrity, are you?”
River snorts lightly. “That would depend entirely upon the era and who you’re asking.”
“Well that’s not mysterious at all.” He lifts an eyebrow at her and she wants to tell him she used to be more mystery than one man could handle but instead she drops her eyes back to her tray, eyeing her fish fingers dubiously. “Got something against fish fingers?”
“What?”
“You’re staring at them like you have a personal vendetta.”
“We have a… history.”
“You have a history with fish fingers?”
“Something like that.”
He sips his water, watching her intently with those kind blue eyes, his lips twitching. “If you’re trying to scare me away by being weird, it isn’t working. I like weird.”
River meets his stare coolly. “If I wanted to scare you away, you’d be gone by now.”
“Touché.” He ducks his head, hiding a smile. “So you probably won’t be eating your lunch?”
She shakes her head, watching him lift his own to stare at her curls bouncing with the movement. It reminds her too much of someone else and she turns her head from the sight of his apparent fascination, dropping her fish fingers onto his lunch tray. “Bon appetite,” she says, moving to stand.
“No, wait.” His hand shoots out to grasp her wrist and she pauses, frozen in place. When was the last time someone touched her – pub brawls and drunken, grief-fueled fucks not included. She can’t even remember. “I wasn’t asking for your lunch. I was -” He lets go of her wrist to scratch the back of his head with boyish timidity, and River stares at him in silence, hearts in her throat and the skin of her wrist still tingling with the unfamiliarity of human contact. “I was actually asking you to dinner. In a fumbling, clumsy, idiotic kind of way.”
He squints against the sun above their heads, watching her hopefully as she peers down at him in stunned silence. “A date?”
He grins. “I believe that’s what the kids are calling it these days.”
She swallows thickly, thinking of smiling hazel eyes, a burning kiss, the soft silk of a bowtie wrapped snugly around her hand like a promise. She thinks of a decade of lonely days and nights, phone calls and secret messages left unanswered. A promise someone else broke first.
River curls her hand around her wrist, cradling it to her chest. “OK. Dinner.”
-
Shoving her key into the lock on her front door, River turns it viciously, grumbling to herself about entitled freshmen, wanting nothing more than to slip into a nice hot bath before crawling into bed. It’s Friday and she has a weekend of sleep ahead of her. Her Saturdays aren’t nearly as exciting as they used to be. Pushing open the door, she tucks her key back into her bag and drops the whole thing in the foyer, shedding her coat and turning to hang it on the rack by the door. The moment she lifts her head, it becomes immediately apparent that she has not come home to an empty house. The lights have been dimmed and soft music floats down the hall from the dining room to reach her ears. Small, lit tea candles litter every available surface.
Frowning, River wanders further into the house, shaking raindrops from her curls as she calls out, “Bruce?”
It hadn’t taken half an hour into dinner six months ago before she’d told him she was a married woman and while it might not matter any more and he might be dead for all she knew, she wouldn’t ever be able to truly give her hearts to anyone else. Bruce still didn’t leave and unlike some, he’s been there every day since, not galaxies and worlds away like he has forgotten she even exists. He’s become a friend and while River is only too aware that he would take more if she offered, she doesn’t kid herself. Letting Bruce into her bed would be a distraction, nothing more. She likes having him around too much to ruin it.
“Bruce?”
“In here – put the gun away, Song.”
She rolls her eyes, removing her hand from her thigh holster before stepping into the dining room. Bruce stands by the candlelit dining table, wearing a pressed suit and grinning widely at her as he pulls out a chair and gestures for her to sit. River doesn’t move, standing frozen in the doorway. “What’s this?”
“Just a nice dinner.” He gestures to the chair again, shrugging. “Come sit. I want to talk to you.”
There’s a lump in her throat and her hearts pound in pure, unadulterated panic but she manages to choke out, “You’re not about to get down on one knee, are you?”
“What? No!” Eyes widening, Bruce shakes his head quickly, holding up a calming hand. “I’m many things, but I’m not a bigamist, River.”
She breathes out quietly in relief, managing a small smile as she steps into the room and approaches the dining table, noticing the carefully laid place settings as she takes her seat. “What’s this about then? Finally breaking up with me?”
He offers her a hard look and pours her a glass of wine. “We’d have to be in a relationship for that to happen.”
River takes her glass from him, allowing him to brush his fingers flirtatiously against hers. “A friendship is a type of relationship. And we both know you’re waiting around in hopes of something a bit more… physical.”
“Am not.” He scowls. “Well, I wouldn’t say no. But this – what we have now, is good enough for me.”
River sips her wine under his gaze, humming thoughtfully. “Alright, so you’re not proposing and you’re not abandoning me but we’re sitting here having a lovely romantic dinner…” She lifts a brow playfully. “Bruce, are you pregnant?”
He sniffs. “Are you quite through?”
“What’s the matter?” She laughs softly. “Your sense of humor is missing tonight.”
“Well you’re ruining the mood, Song.” He nudges her foot almost petulantly beneath the table. “Shut it.”
Folding her hands patiently in front of her, River sighs. “Go on then. I’m listening.”
He waits a beat, either for dramatic effect or to make sure she really is done being a cheeky sod. Then, he clears his throat and says, “I’ve been thinking -” Another suspicious pause, but River only blinks innocently at him, pursing her lips against a smile. “We spend a lot of time together.”
“Yes…”
“And most nights, unless you’re out doing whatever it is you do, we’re hanging out. So I don’t think it’s completely out of left field to ask you if you would -”
He keeps talking but River doesn’t hear him. She stares at him in silence, watching his mouth move but she hears nothing he says. Letting Bruce into her life hadn’t been an easy decision. River trusts so few people but he just wormed his way in and refused to leave. He’s been a good friend to her but she is only too aware of how much he wants something she is unwilling to give. It isn’t fair to keep him around but River has become her husband, too selfish to let go of those who make her better. She even cares for Bruce in her own way, but never the way she cared for – loved – someone else.
She doesn’t know if she’ll ever be ready and part of her worries she’ll spend the rest of her life waiting. It’s quite obvious at this point that the Doctor isn’t going to come back. They’ve always been going in reverse and she knew one day, she would meet him when he no longer even knew her name. She hadn’t expected to survive it but she did. And now it’s all over – an entire marriage gone, with nothing but a dusty book as proof that it ever existed at all.
“So what do you think?” Bruce watches her hopefully, waiting for an answer as he pushes the tray of strawberries toward her.
“Sorry, what?”
“About the matching friendship bracelets.”
River blinks at him.
He grins. “Weren’t listening to a word I said, were you?”
“No, not really.”
“Too busy panicking?”
“A bit, yes,” she says sardonically, unamused by his answering grin.
“I’m leaving the minute summer break starts – family obligations back home. I was asking you to water my plants, look after my dog. Maybe get the mail.” He gestures around him. “The dinner might have been a bit much but I didn’t want you to say no.”
I still might, she thinks, frowning. He’d scared the life out of her, putting on such a production for the sake of watering his sodding plants. Honestly.
He grins at her like he knows what she’s thinking. “So, what do you say?”
She never gets the chance to reply. The dining room is quiet, only the soft classical music Bruce had put on playing in the background. And then she can’t even hear it anymore as another sound fills the room – a loud, screeching, horror-inducing, wonderful, familiar sound.
River gazes blankly ahead and feels all the blood drain from her face.
Bruce stares back at her, eyes wide. “Is that -”
“Yes.” Her hearts sing but her mind roars with terror. She curls her shaking hands into fists in her lap, swallowing thickly. “My husband’s home.”
The TARDIS materializes right in front of the dining table and River sits frozen in place, a lump the size of a small planet lodged in her suddenly tight throat. Bruce stares at her but she can’t bring herself to look at him, eyes trained on the doors of that beautiful blue ship, waiting for the man inside to bound out and give her the first glimpse of her husband in over a decade.
Between one shaky breath and the next, the doors creak open and a man steps out – just not the man she’d been expecting. This man is still tall and thin but his hair is curly and gray and his eyes are bright blue. His features are softer and almost delicate. There are lines of age around his mouth and eyes. She stares at him with embarrassing hunger. No matter how old or how young the face, her hearts still pound whenever he’s near.
He doesn’t even see her. The Doctor takes one look at Bruce and the candlelit dinner before huffing and whirling back to his ship, nudging it none too gently with a booted foot. “For Christ’s sake, this is not the Antarctic in the year 4000!”
“Perhaps not.” River clears her throat, wondering why her voice chooses now to become all wobbly and quiet, like a scared little girl. “But it’s about to be just as cold, husband.”
At the sound of her voice, he stops moving entirely. He does not turn to face her but the line of his shoulders tenses, his spine straightens and his fingers curl into fists at his sides. He drops his head to stare at his shoes. Very quietly, he asks, “Why here?” and she’s quite certain he isn’t talking to her. He’s talking to the TARDIS.
What little hope she was holding on to vanishes in the face of his apparent apathy. Years spent waiting and when he finally shows up, he hadn’t meant to visit at all. It’s infuriating. “Why here? Maybe she was tired of you ignoring my calls. You may have decided a wife doesn’t suit the new face but she certainly hasn’t forgotten her child.”
“And you think I have?” He finally whirls to look at her and even scowling, she can’t help but drink him in, admiring the new face. Grumpy looks good on him now, more natural and less like a spoiled child. Must be the eyebrows.
“I don’t know what other conclusion I could possibly come to. Ten years, Doctor! Without a word from you!”
For a moment, he looks stunned by the revelation before the scowl returns. She’s beginning to think it’s just his new resting face. “How the bloody hell was I to know? You’re supposed to be -”
She raises an eyebrow when he stops himself mid-sentence. “What? Dead?” She raises her chin, shrugging. “Tried that once. Ever so dull.”
He gapes, promptly snaps his mouth shut and marches forward, right into her personal space. Some things never change. She struggles not to so much as breathe, reluctant to even catch the scent of him as he leans in close, those blue eyes serious and intent as he reaches out a bony hand and pokes her in the chest, just above her hearts. “Not a ghost.”
“Not anymore.”
God help her she draws in a breath despite herself, filling her senses with the rich smell of coffee and spice, the familiar underlying scent of time lingering as always. Her eyes fall shut against her will and he stays close, hovering, fingertips at her elbow and his nose brushing her curls. “River -”
“River?”
Her eyes fly open and she nearly chokes on her next breath.
Bruce.
She’d forgotten all about him.
The Doctor draws away from her instantly and while she sighs in relief, another part of her nearly wails at the loss of contact. She shakes herself quickly and turns to the man still sitting at the dining table and frowning at them. The Doctor frowns right back, eyeing him with suspicion. “Who’s the tosser?”
He stands, holding out a hand the Doctor wastes no time in ignoring entirely. “Bruce Baldwin.” River darts her gaze between both of them, the love of her life and the man who has kept the loneliness at bay the past six months. “I’m a friend of River’s.”
The tense set of the Doctor’s shoulders relaxes somewhat, the lines around his eyes losing their hard edge, and a small, vindictive part of River – the psychopath that never really left her, only slept in some dark corner of her mind, waiting to be awakened – wants him to hurt just as much as she has been. It surges forward with a vengeance and makes her blurt out, “Lover.”
The Doctor stiffens instantly, his penetrating blue eyes watching Bruce like a predator sizing up his intended victim for a weakness. She can see his fingers itching to reach for his sonic. Across the table, Bruce gapes at her in silence.
“How?”
“He asked me to dinner, I said yes, six months later, here we are -”
“No,” he snaps, eyes flashing. “How can you have a lover when you have a husband? Unless our marriage is suddenly more open than I remember, my darling psychopath, adultery is generally frowned upon!”
“Ten years of abandonment is enough to annul any relationship, my love.”
The term of endearment slips out as naturally as breathing, even after all this time.
Bruce and the Doctor both flinch, for entirely different reasons.
“It’s impossible to abandon someone I thought was long gone.” The Doctor glares, like a wounded animal backed into a corner. “And in case you’ve forgotten, we were married at every moment in the history of the universe.” He turns to Bruce for just a moment, looking possessive and smug. River wants to kiss him and slap him at once. “There are at least a few galaxies left in which you are still a married woman unless I give my consent.” He looks to her again, lifting an impressive eyebrow. “So go on then, Barry -”
“It’s Bruce.”
“Yes, that’s what I said. Run along. Find somebody else’s wife to canoodle with.”
Bruce rises slowly to his feet, glowering. “I’m not going anywhere unless River asks me to.”
The Doctor huffs out an exasperated sigh, waving a commanding hand that makes her blood boil. “River, get rid of your pet.”
“No.”
Clearly shocked to his core, the Doctor actually really looks at her face for the first time since he strode out of the TARDIS. She isn’t sure what he sees – possibly the shine of angry tears in her eyes, the furious flush of her cheeks, the way her always steady hands tremble – but whatever it is, it gives him pause. “River,” he begins again, almost gently.
She shakes her head, clenching her teeth. “No. You don’t get a say – not anymore. You gave up that right a long time ago.”
“You’re the one who gave up, River.”
“Don’t you dare.” Tears sting her eyes but she stubbornly pushes them away. “I waited years for you to turn up. You never did.”
He growls and bites out, “Buggering hell, since when does River Song just wait around for me to show up? Why didn’t you call me?”
“I did!” She doesn’t realize she’s shouting until Bruce lays a quelling hand on her elbow. She shrugs him off violently, prodding a finger into the Doctor’s chest and pushing back tears. “I looked for you everywhere, always just a moment too late. I spent years carving Hello Sweetie into every sodding stone tablet and cliff face I could find. You never answered.”
She watches the array of emotions play themselves out across his older features – helpless, devastated, and all the way back around to scowling and angry again. “I never saw anything.”
“I know.” She swallows, unable to face the look in his eyes as she drops her gaze to the floor. “I thought you were gone. I thought it was over -”
He doesn’t stick around to listen to the rest of her excuses, turning on his heel and stalking back into the TARDIS. Her hearts leap into her throat but River doesn’t try to stop him. She survived without him all this time and she’ll keep doing it long after he flies away again.
“River, what the hell? Why would you tell him that? I’m not your -”
She puts up a hand, silencing Bruce without a word, and waits. She stares at the TARDIS, hardly breathing as she waits for the moment it begins to fade away. She waits nearly a full five minutes before she realizes he isn’t leaving.
The Old Girl gives a faint, mournful hum.
River takes an unconscious step forward, hand outstretched.
“River?”
She glances over her shoulder at Bruce but she barely even sees him, already imagining what she’ll find when she steps through those doors. “I have to -”
“Fine.” He waves a hand at her. “Go. But then I want to know why you’re trying to get me killed by a guy who could hide the body at the beginning of fucking time.”
Biting her tongue against a retort, River turns away. The humming of the TARDIS grows louder as she moves closer. She draws in a steadying breath and pushes open the door, stepping inside for the first time in a decade. It looks different, cold blue lights and shadowy corners, bookshelves along the walls and a leather armchair that looks well-worn. It's still more of a home than her own has ever been. There is barely any time to take in the Old Girl’s new look because as River shuts the door behind her and walks toward the console, she can see the Doctor standing on the other side.
He doesn’t look up at the sound of her footsteps, his jaw clenched tightly and his eyes void of any emotion at all as he calmly and systemically wrenches apart the console. Sparks fly and River flinches but the Doctor does not. His movements turn sharper and more brutal, his fists white-knuckled as he grips wires and yanks with all his might.
The TARDIS groans.
River rushes forward with a pained gasp and shoves him away. He stumbles back into the railing with enough force to expel the breath from his lungs and he wheezes, hands on his knees as he glares at her and struggles to breathe. “What the hell are you doing?”
“A time machine,” he scoffs, his Scottish accent thicker in his rage. He glares up at the time rotor and takes another menacing step forward but River stops him with a hand on his chest. “You can’t even take me to my wife! What bloody good are you?” He shoves her aside before she can stop him and heaves one last swift kick against the console. Sparks rain down on them again and River reaches for her husband with a lump in her throat.
“Sweetie, look at me.” He tries to push her away but she refuses to budge, taking his face in her hands. “Look at me.” Blue eyes dart up to her face once quickly and then away again. River sighs. “Stop this.”
He shakes his head. “If I’d known you were out there somewhere -”
“I know, my lo-” She stops herself, forcing a pained smile. “I know. I suppose it was just… meant to be.”
“Bollocks to that.” He frowns and she chokes out a laugh at his new vocabulary, too surprised when he lifts his hands to cover hers on his face to actually stop him even if she wanted to. His hands are soft and his fingers stroke over her knuckles with a frantic sort of tenderness. “Come with me.”
Her stomach lurches. “Doctor -”
He clenches his jaw and his blue eyes burn when he looks at her. “I’m not leaving without you.”
River trembles at the determination in his voice and balls her hands into fists. “That isn’t your decision to make.”
“Do you love him?”
“This has nothing to do with him.”
“Right. Of course not.” The Doctor nods once, smiles a grim smile that makes her instantly suspicious, and straightens his shoulders. “Fine. Good.”
She blinks. “What?”
He turns from her and begins fiddling with the console. She notices instantly that his movements are gentler now, fingers lingering on the controls and stroking buttons like an apology. “Probably for the best we part ways. Bit of a relief, actually. This face isn’t quite so keen on love.”
It shouldn’t have stung quite so sharply to be cast aside. He did it all the time but never to her. She had always been different. Human plus. Melody Pond River Song. The woman who married him. Companions came and went like the changing of the tides but River remained – his constant, his bespoke psychopath. She had expected him to fight for her. River blinks back the sting of tears in her eyes and turns from the sight of his back to her, straightening her shoulders and scrubbing a hand over her face. When she speaks, she makes certain her voice does not waver. “Then why are you here?”
“Well, I never meant to come here at all but apparently the Old Girl knew I would need you.”
“For what?”
“Finding Gallifrey.”