Secret (13th Doctor x River Song)

Running

Love.

Love is a very tricky thing and there's no one who knows this better than the Doctor. To her, love and loss were one in the same and it was rare to be able to find any happiness amongst it. So, she's always done her best to rule out love of any sort.

Care and compassion on the other hand? A completely different story and she had an endless plethora of it. Caring deeply for the universe and those around her is something she's always known. It is easy to put the label of love onto compassion because sometimes they can feel like they're the same thing, but the Doctor could tell you better than anyone that they most certainly are not.

Through her many years of life the Doctor has become certain about many things and was more often times than not too stubborn and stuck up to change her mind. There was one person in the whole universe that might've had the power to do just that, but she was gone and there was no time left to have with her.

~
The Doctor sat, head in hands on the Tardis. This was part of her alone time of drifting through space without her last companion who actually wanted to stay with her, Yaz. It was difficult but she needed it now more than ever, working through her feelings was so strange with these new female hormones rushing through her body. Her guilt, her pain, her shame, it all felt brand new again. She wasn't ready for this, she's had so much anger in her last regenerations, keeping her composure now was so much harder than it was before.

"Maybe I just need a distraction?" The Doctor suggested as she huffed her way towards the control panel. After pressing some buttons and pulling some levers the Tardis began her classic humming, indicating to the Doctor that she was on the way to her destination.

As soon as she landed the Doctor grabbed her overcoat and walked out of the Tardis, into the dry, dry sun of Utah. Her first instincts were to get right back inside and fly far, far away, but she was already here. This wasn't a place that she ever expected to go back to, but maybe her subconscious was trying to tell her something, maybe the Tardis was trying to tell her something.

The crisp air entered her lungs and the Doctor leaned down to pick up some of the dirty sand, or maybe it was sandy dirt. It ran quite naturally through her fingers and she gave it an inspecting lick. Utah, America 22nd of April, 2021 and as she tasted it she turned around to find an all too familiar diner.

The Doctor walked up and stepped inside, breathing in the nostalgia. It smelled of burnt coffee but it wasn't like she cared. She sat down in a booth and tried her best to unwind. This was the fourth time she's been back in this small diner or maybe it wasn't exactly this diner, but it was certainly seen in a new light with her returned memories of Clara. The Doctor wasn't usually a fan of nostalgia since it always ever seemed to bring back bad memories, but for some reason this time it felt right.

"Can I get you anything ma'am?" The waitress asked in her standard American accent, the Doctor looked up to meet the waitress's eyes. They shone an entrancing blue that complimented her uniform perfectly and she had a smile that made her feel so kind. While studying her, the Doctor got lost in her thoughts making her forget to reply. "Ma'am?" The waitress questioned once again, this snapped the Doctor out of her trance.

"Uh, sorry. I'm okay, just here to sit. Just doing some sitting is all." The Doctor shook her head while she replied, partly to make her best attempt at an authentic apology and partly to bring her back to reality.

"Alright, well let me know if I can help with anything." The waitress smiled an even kinder smile and the Doctor did her best to flash a smile back as the waitress went on her way back to work.

The Doctor brought her feet up onto the booth cushion and found herself sitting on her knees. "Sitting. I'm sitting." She murmured to herself. She was having a hard time feeling comfortable and it was showing quite obviously through her posture. She wouldn't allow herself to feel her discomfort though until she ended up shooting up out of her seat. "And now I'm standing." She was still talking to herself but it was loud enough so the waitress could hear this time.

Before she knew it the Doctor had dashed out of the diner door. "Running." And she was, she was running, away from the diner, away from the Tardis. She's been running for as long as she can remember, so why stop now? A tear began to stream down the Doctor's face before she quickly wiped it away and kept running.

The thing is about the Doctor is that running used to be easy, it was the only thing she knew how to do and she was good at it but over more and more and more time she found that running just made her feel more guilty, more angry. All of her pain was in this brand new perspective and at this point running had started to get old. For all those years it had made her feel young and as adventurous as ever but if there's anything she's learned over the past few hundred years it's that no matter what she's running from it will always catch up.

She ended up running for much longer than expected and found herself at an even more familiar location, a familiar body of water more specifically. The Doctor was alone back at Lake Silencio and all she could do was stare out at the view. It was so much more beautiful than she had remembered it but the last time she was here, things were a bit distracting to say the least.

Why did she run here? To remind herself of the pain of her past? Of how much she missed Amy, Rory, and River? Oh, River. River, River, River, how she missed her, how she cared for her, but the time had come more than once for her to say goodbye, and she had to die because of her. She was one of biggest sources of the Doctor's pain, guilt, and loss but the only thing she could allow herself to think about in that moment was, why did she run here?! Maybe this was all the further proof she needed that everything she was running from always caught up with her.

"You know, I came here hoping there'd be more than one person. Thought maybe this place would be a tourist attraction these days. He certainly knew how to draw the attention, but I suppose everyone really has forgotten him." The voice came from behind the Doctor and it rang throughout her mind like a perfect harmony.

Speak of the devil herself.