Spacewives Oneshot

2

goodbyes are not the end; it means i’ll miss you until we meet again

melodypond_thewomanwhomarried
                               me

One

The first time he says goodbye to her, she isn’t there anymore. It’s really her goodbye to him, he thinks - but her words and her tears dig a hole in his hearts that he hasn’t been able to fill since.

She’s important. That much is obvious. So many people are in this universe, across galaxies and to the ends of existence. But she - she’s important to him in a way no one else has been since Gallifrey. Because out of so many people who have died in front of him, died for him, none of them have ever come back to haunt him the way River Song does; with a smirk and a strut and a mischievous glint in her eyes.

He stares a hole into her diary. All that’s left of a woman he just met but who somehow knew him better than anyone. A book full of adventures he knows he’ll have one day - adventures with River Song. His hearts clench tightly in his chest. He knows it will happen. It has to happen. He promised her as much.

He will watch time take River Song away from him the way he watched her burn in front of him.

Two

The second time he says goodbye to her - really says goodbye to her - she isn’t there anymore. Where there should be flesh and heart and matter, all he can feel is coldness. Cold not-skin, cold not-breaths and cold, cold touches.

But it’ s her. And it’s  been so long.

He doesn’ t care.

He doesn’t want the first time he feels her in decades to be a touch filled with anger, so he grabs her hand before it connects with his face and pulls her close. As his hand closes around her arm he thinks anything, absolutely anything could happen right now and he wouldn’t give a damn.

River is here, and he’ll probably never see her again.

Words. Words never mattered much to them - to the woman who grew up in a battlefield full of liars and the man who uses his mouth to manipulate - but nothing he’ s ever said, nothing he will ever say is as important as what she wants to hear.

“You are always here to me. And I always listen. And I can always see you,” he whispers.

His grip around her arms is tight and he wonders if she can feel it - his nails digging into her, his palm sweat on her cold skin. He wonders if she can feel how every cell in his body is itching to pull her near - to pull her into him, to give her his breath and his soul and his hearts. He wonders if she can feel how desperate he is for her to be real, actually, properly real - alive.

“Then why didn’t you speak to me?” she asks tearfully.

Oh, River, he thinks. How could he speak to her like this? After knowing that he’ s losing her, after knowing he’s already lost her? How could he ever bear to speak to her when she isn’ t truly here?

I’m sorry, he thinks. Because it hurts. It hurts to acknowledge that she’s there, not dead enough and yet not really alive. It hurts because he left her that way. His wife. His River.

“ Because I thought it would hurt to much. ”

It did. It does. It hurts, to speak to her this way when he can’t feel her breath or her touch, when she can’t stay - what’s the point? It will be their last. The end of the Doctor and River Song.

“I believe I could’ ve coped.”

He’s a stupid, selfish old man. He knows that, staring into the tear-filled eyes of his wife. River has always been the bett er one of them, no matter what. She would’ve done anything to come back to him again - she would’ve torn the universe apart. And yet here he is. Always taking from her, never giving back.