#STEVEN YOU CAN PRY THIS ENDING FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS YOU WANKER

[amillionmillionvoices]

Ohhhhh could you do the 19? For River and Twelve? Please?

For one long, piercing moment, he thinks it didn’t work. He feels the regeneration energy under his skin, feels every cell in his body for, feels nothing. Everything is black and empty and cold, so cold, and he can’t feel his body, the ground, the air.

He opens his eyes and sees blue.

Blue, and the edges of green - leaves, he thinks - and a single, white cloud.

“Finally,” a voice says from somewhere to his left. “Took you long enough.”

It’s familiar, but not terribly so, and, if he’s not mistaken, cross.

Very, very cross.

Arching his neck, he sees the upside down figure of a woman standing over him, arms crossed, looking none too happy but faintly relieved.

“Where am I?”

“Where you intended to be, I hope,” she says curtly.

The Doctor sits up slowly, sees lush green and hears soft birdsong and her— “Anita.”

She arches an eyebrow. “Surprised you remember me.”

“I always remember the brave ones.”

She flushes, but her dour expression doesn’t change, and he clambers to his feet, brushing grass off his trousers.

“Are you going to make me guess?”

Anita huffs. “I should. You deserve a little punishment.”

The Doctor runs a hand through his hair. “How long—?”

“Too long,” she snaps, then takes pity on him. “She’s in the library.”

Some horror or dread must show on his face, because Anita smirks and shakes her head.

“The library here,” she says, inclining her head toward the mansion in the distance. “Come in, I’ll show you.”

The walk is long, despite his clipped pace, but it gives him time to catch his bearings - to feel the ground under his feet, the wind against his face. Everything feels real and whole and free of pain, but not the thrumming anxiety under his skin.

“Back of the house,” Anita says when they reach the door. “Third room on your right. Don’t screw this up.”

He nods, wonders when Anita became his wife’s protector, wonders how many years, decades, centuries—

He stalls that line of thought before it can take root.

The library is easy enough to find, a cavernous room with high shelves and a fireplace and quiet music coming from a speaker somewhere. Light streams in through the windows, makes it feel like home, but it’s nothing compared to how he feels when he sees her, curled up on a sofa with a heavy tomb in her lap.

He doesn’t know what to say. He feels too off kilter for their usual greetings, ones that are too light for the moment, for the enormity of what he’s done, finally, after all this time.

“If you’re looking for a doubles partner, it’s going to have to wait,” she says, eyes still glued to her book. “I’m halfway through the fall of Titus IV and I’m not in the mood to watch your vain attempts at impressing Miss Evangelista.”

He almost laughs.  “You play tennis now?”

Terrible first words, he thinks, worse than any he’s had before.  River’s entire body stiffens, her eyes trapped on whatever word she’d last read, fingers curling into fists.

“If this is some kind of joke, so help me—”

“River.”

He doesn’t know when he moved, how he managed it, but he’s standing over her when she looks up, her eyes wide and wet, lips parted.  The book falls from her lap with a heavy thud, but she ignores it. She stares at him, hand reaching for him then falling away, and the guilt sits in his chest like a writhing thing, makes him feel sick.

He tries to smile, for her, but it comes out weak and lopsided. He doesn’t back away when she stands, so slowly, and it feels like so many mornings on Darillium, River in his shirt and bare feet, arching up on her toes to kiss him good morning, or good afternoon, or hello.

She stares, and he stares back, and really he should have expected it, but the ringing slap that echos in the room and spikes pain down his neck catches him off guard.

He grunts, turning his eyes back to glare at her as he rubs at his cheek, but it’s mitigated by the tears in her eyes and the way she swallows, her fingers flexing against her thigh.

“Just checking,” she says, though her voice is raspy, and he can’t help the quirk of his lips.

“Slapping me was your only option?”

She purses her lips. “No. But it is my preferred method.”

He sighs. “I suppose I deserved that.” He glances down, and notices her hands are shaking, trembling violently against her sides, and he reaches out before he can stop himself taking both in his own and holding them close.

“River.”

“You’re here?”

He nods, and kisses her knuckles.  “I’m here.”

“This isn’t a trick?”

“No trick.  I’m dead.  Well—changed. You know how it is.”

“And you—stopped to visit?”

The way her voice breaks, the disbelief, coils tightly in his chest.

“No, River,” he murmurs.  “I’m here. For good.”

Her eyes widen, lips parting and he wants to kiss her, wants to hold her, wants to wrap her up and tell her over and over and over again how much he missed her, how much he loves her, how dear and precious and everything she is to him.

“But—why?”

It cuts through him, such a simple question, so much if you ever loved me and the Doctor does not, and has never, loved me etched in the words that he has to close his eyes for a moment, has to even his breathing, the rapid tattoo of his hearts.

“Guess I just can’t stay away from you,” he says, so softly, and hopes she knows, hopes she can see it burning in his eyes, the words he now has an eternity to say.  And he will. Not now, not when they’re both too frayed, River too unsure to properly believe him. But someday. Soon.

“Idiot,” she says, and then her arms are around his neck and her lips against his and he cradles her to him, warm and safe.

Alive, he thinks, and it isn’t sad at all.

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