Never Fade From Me (The Life & Times of River Song & The Doctor)

Everybody Lives

"...everybody lives..."

River Song closed her diary, when she had written those words a long time ago that day had been one of those glorious, shining days when she had been alongside the Doctor and anything was possible. On a lonely outpost on the edge of the known Universe, River and the Doctor had ran for their lives that day like never before as they saved the last remaining Thals from annihilation from the Daleks. There had never been a greater victory and a more worthy cause and for an encore they had averted a terrible disaster and rewrote time yet again. Time could be rewritten and countless lives saved but the sad truth was it could never be rewritten for River Song and the Doctor....

"...everybody lives..." River smiled, a sad little wry smile to herself, a stray tear slid down her cheek which she roughly wiped away but no one was watching as she swept her coppery blonde curls away from her eyes that brimmed with so many conflicting emotions. River was alone, Miss Evangelista had been the first to go and one by one she had watched her fellow archaeologist friends peacefully go on their way. Of course CAL was still here but after all it was her world... And River knew she shouldn't still be here but here she was, always the last one to leave the party. But now it really was time to go.

In one of the remotest and beautiful places in this world, River was balanced, somehow with both precision and carelessness on the edge of a sandy white clifftop overlooking the endless sea, she clutched her battered TARDIS blue diary close to her chest and closed her eyes, uttering repeatedly to herself.

"This should be easy...It's just like falling asleep...I've got to go now."

River was trying to find the strength to let go, the worst had already happened, so there was nothing left to fear.

"...everybody lives..."

But the memory of that day kept running through her head and like a child still clinging on to a dream she could not believe that this was the end and wanted to believe in one last miracle because that's how it felt all those times when she had ran with the Doctor. Though of course it wasn't the whole story because for all the good days with the Doctor, there must also be the bad and as River Song learned in the most cruellest possible way, nothing lasts forever and no matter how fast you run, hanging onto the coat tails of the Doctor, it can't save you because time along with its constant companion death will always catch up with you in the end.

River Song was dead.

Though it wasn't as straightforward and simple as that, nothing ever was with the Doctor... River's death was a fixed point in time, she had to die but all those years ago the Doctor could not lose her completely, so with the aid of a neural relay he saved her soul and River became a living consciousness, a data ghost uploaded into a virtual reality world, inside the mind of a little girl wired into a vast computer mainframe. Nobody died that day in the library, which in itself was a miracle and you could say it was a happy ending like something from a fairy tale but no one could be expected to live like that for all eternity and once the euphoria of simply existing had faded it soon became clear that it was no existence at all, not for someone like Professor River Song, the child of the TARDIS once known as Melody Pond who had been born to kill but also to love the Doctor, no, she was someone who had truly lived. Though nevertheless some part of her had lived on for many years in that virtual world, secretly hoping she would see her love again but the hardest part had always been accepting that there was no Doctor in this world which had been little more than an imitation of life.

That day in the library the Doctor had "saved" his wife with the best of intentions because he loved her. And maybe if he had visited, even if it had been for just one last day to have said goodbye she could have faded away without any fuss...Well perhaps. But River was far from at peace, every single day she would return to that final moment of her life and the heart breaking realization that the Doctor had always known...But in her heart she had always suspected that he'd known how she would die. She had always been his ghost. But for River that was okay, you had to die one day and she would have given her life a thousand times over for the Doctor. And River didn't care that she had died for a younger version of the Doctor that had only met her for the first time that day because he was still the same man, even though he didn't know her yet and besides the Doctor would have done anything to swap places with her and given his life for her and everyone else in the library. The Doctor had been simply amazing but wasn't he always? Even though he had not been her Doctor, not yet...

"Time can be rewritten!"

"Not those times. Not one line! Don't you dare! It's okay...You'll see me again. You've got all that to come. You and me, time and space. You watch us run..."

There was no turning back as a blinding light descended and then the very eventful and controversial life of Professor River Song ended, it had been some consolation to know she hadn't died in vain, saving all those people trapped in the virtual world but it hadn't been easy for River to make sense of her new existence, trapped somewhere inexplicably between life and death. And the longer time swept by in that virtual world the more River had begun to think that maybe, just maybe the Doctor might have made a big, old, terrible, sentimental mistake all those years ago.

River Song's eyes suddenly snapped opened, though now they blazed passionately with defiance as she stared at the monstrous gulf below her, she told herself that she was nothing more than an echo willing herself out of existence but she couldn't help thinking of him and every time her thoughts, her very heart and soul kept returning to the Doctor she felt so alive. River frowned slightly, her shoulders slumped with weary exasperation but even despite the terrible predicament she now found herself in, she still smiled fondly at the thought of him.

"Husband you really didn't think it through..."