Yowzah Oneshot Collection (3)

81(G)

I know the tears we cry have dried on yesterday

                  coffeesuperhero

When she kisses him, it takes him quite by surprise. It's not unlike the first time, though from her perspective, he supposes, this is, in fact, the first time she's kissed him, and it's just this side of unfair, isn't it, that she has surprised him now just like she will have done, however many years from now in her future, his past.

"That was unexpected," he says, and she smiles.

"About time, more like," she says warmly. She starts off down a tree-lined path, the buildings of the university rising behind them. "It was my graduation present to myself, now that I'm finally Doctor River Song. I've had a mad crush on you since I was twenty, you know."

"No, I didn't know that," he confesses, and it's true. He has never known how they began, for all she would ever say on the subject was, "Spoilers," and though he was certain that it had been her move, her decision, he has never wanted to press the issue, as certain as he has always been that their odd little timeline would mean that the beginning was also the end. He wonders if that's where they are now.

"You dazzle people, you know," she's saying, and he stops puzzling over their timestreams and listens. "I'm no exception. But it took me a long time to see you for who you are, to see the man behind all the stories and the legends, to love you instead of the idea of you."

"And who am I, then," he murmurs, shuffling along beside her. "To you."

"You're my Doctor, of course. No more, no less. So much bound up in one little word." River studies his face, shadowed in the moonlight. "This isn't the first time I've kissed you," she says, like it's a fact, like she knows, and probably she does, he thinks, because it's probably written all over his face.

"No," he replies, thinking of Stormcage, long ago, before he knew much of anything about her aside from her cleverness and her hair and her marksmanship. There's been far too much sadness for her since then, though it is something of a comfort to know that she lives through it, that she becomes a person he cannot imagine facing down an army without. Though perhaps, he thinks, looking at her now, that is who she is, already.

"You didn't make some sort of ridiculous promise, did you," she says, narrowing her eyes at him, "to my parents, about me. Because they should have known better than to-"

He holds up his hand, interrupting. "I promised to always keep you safe," he says, and he wants to protest, to tell her not to love him, not to know him. She ordered him, years from now, years ago, to let these moments be written, to watch them run through all those precious finite years of time and space that they had already been allotted, but now that he has come to the start of it all, now that he has known the pain and the heartbreak of losing her, now that he has seen that same pain in the faces of his dearest friends, he finds it infinitely harder to acquiesce to her final request, to spare her the library, if he can, even if it means that all his memories are for nothing. "I promised them on my life, that you'd be safe."

"You've done a bang-up job of that," she laughs, and he hopes she doesn't notice the way he winces. There is too much history between them tonight, he thinks, and yet, hardly any at all. She continues on, either unaware of his discomfiture or blessedly ignoring it. "I shudder to think how you'd have fared on that last trip if I hadn't been along."

"Yes, yes, you're a person of inestimable value in any situation," he says, tucking his hands into his pockets. They turn down a side lane on the university grounds, walking in silence for awhile through the gardens.

"Has it ever been strange, knowing everything that you know, about me? Watching this happen backwards?" she asks, pausing under a trellis covered in starblossoms, blooming out in all directions, reaching for the starlight, growing, changing, surviving.