Yowzah Oneshot Collection (1)

54(M)

Don't threaten me with love, baby.

Let’s just go walking in the rain.

She blames her genetics, really. Can a partiality for weather be DNA based?  Maybe there’s an extra allele for that – who knows? But despite living her entire life in cages of one kind or another (or perhaps because of this fact) she longs for rain. The damp, heavy air so thick with moisture it feels like every breath is hydrating.

She loves the moment just before the rain pours.  The overwhelming scent of earth and moisture, the air hung heavy with electrical charge, building and building until something bursts and the rain washes away all that anxious build-up with a soothing cadence.

She even loves rainstorms, when every drop is a stinging punishment and the sky thunders and growls around her, flashing its displeasure.  Sometimes a good hard rain is needed. A sharp shock to remind you of who and what you are. Other times, a gentler rain is all she needs to wash away the sins and mistakes of the past and begin again.

Either way, she makes it a life-long habit. It had rained right after she had regenerated for the first time, and that had felt healing in a way. Like she could let everything she had been – a scared girl, a weapon, a victim, alone, Melody – wash away as she studied new skin and felt a new face, damp with sweat, tears and rain.

So every so often, she longs for it. For the smell and scent of rain on her skin.  And right now, she needs it.  She inputs coordinates, a planet she’d discovered long ago that spends four months of the year in a rainy season, safe, alien-free and practically uninhabited.  She just needs to move. Away from him because she hadn’t known how difficult this would be.

He was giddy with excitement – it rolled off of him in waves of intensity, so bright, so new. So shiny, and it felt wonderful and so wrong all at once. Wonderful because – well, how could him looking at her like that ever not be wonderful? But wrong too because she could sense the newness of his feelings, he wasn’t just in love with her right now, but in love with idea of being in love with her. Which she basks in – it is an intensity within him she had never really witnessed before, but at the same time she yearns to clutch at every minute that slips by. This newness – the next time she sees him he won’t feel this way.

And that thought festers away within her, like acid on an open wound, bubbling and hissing away until she feels sick with it. She doesn’t want it – doesn’t want to think this way, doesn’t want to constantly be counting down.

“River? Where are we going?” He strides up the stairs, screwdriver open in his hand and his coat off and shirt sleeves rolled up.  “You know it’d be nice if you asked permission.” He speaks seriously but his smile is bright and so new and her hearts ache with it. He is teasing her, flirting with her and she shakes her head quietly, looking down at the console as she blinks back tears. All she’d wanted was for it to last forever – it had been a long, long time as it was, but she is a selfish, greedy creature and she never wanted to hit this point. “River?” Concern laces his tone now and she takes a deep breath before smiling at him in reassurance.

“I just – it’s a place I go to... to – I just needed to make a side trip.” The TARDIS lands silently and she flips the parking brake back on, stroking the console gently. His hand covers hers, and he pulls it from the console, pulling her toward him as he peers at her, worry written all across his youthfully ancient face.

“Talk to me, River.” His other hand hovers over her hair for a moment before sinking down gracelessly, his fingers tangling with her curls there.  Every time he touches her it is with a thin veneer of awe and wonder. She loves and hates and loves it.