Yowzah Oneshot Collection (3)

193(G)

Dark curtains drawn by the passage of time

      mygalfriday (BrinneyFriday)

They are a love story in reverse.

Backwards, sideways, diagonal, every which way one could imagine but forward. There are some days, very special days, when they almost meet in the middle and they cling to those days like starving children, grateful for even one morsel to satiate the gnawing hunger.

It is never enough.

-

They run.

For two hundred years, he runs hand in hand with her. And then he marries her, on top of a pyramid at every point in time. They make a habit of getting married after that – like a game to see who can come up with the wildest idea and they collect marriage certificates from different galaxies like humans collect baseball cards but it is always special, always perfect and so very them.

His favorite part will forever be the kiss. Well, and the honeymoon. They are particularly good at honeymooning.

The River he sees varies from bright-eyed and young studying at Luna University to the naughty Doctor Song breaking out of her cell to spend her nights with him to the slightly more respectable but just as mad Professor but she is always and without fail his River.

He never has to look at her and see her staring right through him. He never has to hear sweetie fall from her lips like a word empty of meaning. He is glad – so, so grateful that her first meeting was in his middle and there is still so much more – but sometimes the guilt is enough to eat him alive. Because River is slowly losing him, seeing his love for her fade from his eyes with every new encounter, and why must she always be the one paying the price for their love? Why is it always so much easier for him? Sometimes he lays awake watching her sleep and he whispers apologies into her hair for things that haven’t happened for her yet, for things he can’t fix.

And then one day he realizes what he has been missing all along. He has been slowly losing her too. Little by little, so quietly he didn’t even notice she was trickling through his fingers like her namesake until the day she came to him beaming and talking animatedly of her upcoming trip to the Library, stealing all the breath from his lungs in one horrifying instant.

It’s time.

She fits perfectly in the circle of his arms – just the way she always has, his bespoke love – as they sway together. The Towers sing and River murmurs into his neck about the preparations that are still to be made for her expedition. He barely listens, all the places he still wants to take her flashing through his mind like a life unfulfilled. He thinks of all the things he never did with her, never said to her, always thinking they had more time while knowing full well every second the universe had to offer would never be enough.

“I was thinking, sweetie…” River suddenly lifts her head from his chest and squints up at him, eyes dancing, and the Doctor doesn’t even try to stop himself from brushing his lips across the bridge of her nose, smiling hollowly when she wrinkles it and laughs. Tracing her fingers over his bowtie, she looks suddenly shy. “When I get back, maybe I could travel with you for a while.”