Yowzah Oneshot Collection (3)

139(G)

Time, it Took Us to Where the Water Was
    
                         lonewytch

Now that your soul has entered my all-too-present flesh

His visits are frequent at first. He marks himself onto her nights, pressing himself into the blue-black light of the corridor as he steps from the Tardis, wrapping his hands around the rigid steel bars of her cell. She is an unseen force, a centre of gravity tugging something at the very centre of him, drawing him in like a fundamental law of the universe, certain as physics, and certain as the birth of stars. No matter how far he flings himself out into the dark of space, no matter how far backwards or forwards he moves, he always finds himself looping back to the cold grey of the Stormcage, elliptical.

…and made with it a soul in kind

Every time is different, unique, and he lives it with the clarity of glass, gazing at every moment even as it passes on. Despite his perfect memory there is a need in him to somehow record all the small moments in some way where he can live every sensation, every feeling again. He is wary that one day, far into the future, his memory will prove fallible and he will find these times slipping away from him, receding like water into dry sand.

…your each embarking thought, the breathing swing and sway of your movement

He takes her to visit new planets, the strange, the exotic and the wonderful. He shares the sharp thrill of discovery with her. They hold hands at the Tardis exit, heart lines pressed tight one against the other, and they throw the doors wide open together. They explore the furthest reaches of time and of space and he pushes his expertise, his knowledge of the riches of the universe to its limits. He searches his past for the beautiful and the sublime and he shares it with her. She wants to see the edges of it, she tells him. She wants to go further, she wants them to see things no one has ever seen before and no one ever will. Her avidity for experience is a force of nature which matches his. She has a passion for life, a thirst for knowledge and experience and a fire for him that warms him to the marrow of his bones.

…makes an impression on the wax of my surrendering will

They crash the balls and the dinner parties of the rich and powerful and get uproariously drunk on extravagant champagnes. River lies her way into them, glowing in her evening dress and her high heels, which later she hangs off the railing of the Tardis. Him in his tux, all made up, polished bright like quartz, hair slicked back. Her tongue is silver and smooth and he admires the dexterity with which she disarms even the most suspicious servants. She flicks her hair, smiles over her shoulder at him as they walk in and then their feet pound and slide across the dance floors for hours on end, their bodies locked in spirals, the movement of amber and rose globes above them. And then later they stagger out, their steps an unsteady staccato. They laugh with abandon, grasping fists of each other’s clothing to keep themselves upright, covered in glitter, the champagne bubbles carrying them stumbling back to the Tardis.

…my mind is but a pillow indented by the flow of your passing thoughts

He knows that sometimes she travels alone. Times when he has followed the rushing of his blood from the Tardis doors, only to find her cell vacant, the only movement the refracted light of the stars through the continual rain, rippling on the walls. Times when she is away doing something that she thinks he will disapprove of, and the pang of disappointment hits him deep.  But the times when she can’t hitch, stowaway or otherwise persuade her way to where she needs to go, he gets a call, or a message on the psychic paper. He trails after her and watches her lie through her teeth, cheat the most experienced gamblers, beguile the unbeguilable, steal guns, and relieve numerous museums and collectors of their artefacts. “Well, sweetie, it’s not really stealing if it didn’t really belong to them in the first place, is it?” And he can’t help but admire her, every moment that he watches her. Her light is so bright that he cannot understand how it doesn’t blind him. Her afterimage burns into him and he can see her behind the dark of his eyelids long after she has gone.