Chapter Text
"It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place.
But for three years I had roses – and apologised to no-one."
—————
Next time, it’s the middle of the night. River doesn’t even hear her enter, just wakes herself up from a dream, rolls over, and sees the blonde standing in her corner.
When they make eye contact, John winces. “Sorry. Did I wake you?”
River shakes her head through a stretch, sighing, sitting up slowly. “No. But you’ve got to stop popping in on me like this, John, what if I wasn’t decent?”
It earns her a chuckle. “I’m not the one choosing the timing, I promise. I wouldn’t exactly choose to stand here in the dark and listen to you snore, you know.”
River glances up at her, lets her eyes drift over her form. John is standing straight today, doesn’t seem to be drugged. Her eyes are bright and sparkling, and her lips are twisting into a half smile. A long beat passes between them, and then John licks her lips, bringing her arms out from behind her back to clasp in front of her. And she smiles, real and big this time. Something in it flashes at the edges of River’s memory and she can’t help but smile back. “Hello, River. How are you?”
River laughs. “Well, I’m still locked up in here. Still getting a mystery visitor every couple of days.”
John raises her eyebrows. “Is it really only days in between for you?”
“Just about. It’s been a bit longer since the last time. I’ve, ah… got some extracurricular activities that make keeping track hard sometimes,” River says.
“It’s months for me,” John murmurs. River pauses and turns, frowning. The blonde is still gazing at her, eyes softer instead of flashing now.
“Months? How long have you been in here?”
Something behind those hazel eyes shifts and then snaps shut. River almost recoils. It reminds her of her husband, when he thinks hiding something from her is the better option.
John shrugs and shoves up from the wall, beginning a quick pace in front of the only window in the room. “A long time. Not sure exactly. Kept track in the beginning, but then they started drugging me and I lost count. Used to have a much higher tolerance for that sort of thing, when I was younger.”
“You don’t look very old,” River tries, leaning back to rest against the wall.
John snorts. “Looks can be deceiving.”
“That reminds me,” River says. “Are you human?”
“No,” John says. River waits for more information, tilts her head. But John just shrugs. “Not human.”
“Are you going to give me a real answer to a single one of my questions?”
John flinches back as if River has taken a swing at her, her nose wrinkling in irritation. “I am giving you real answers.”
“No, you aren’t, you’re giving me half answers to distract me. I swear, you’re worse than my husband.” And there it was again. Something in those eyes locking and backing away from the surface as River watches.
John shrugs again. It’s less carefree this time. “Sorry. What if you’re a hallucination? Or a spy? Can’t be risking that.”
“And what exactly would someone be spying on you for?”
“Oh, loads of things. I’m a big deal,” John starts, and then her eyes shutter again and she resumes her frantic pacing. “In some parts. I’m quite smart. Maybe you’re trying to steal some of my brain thoughts.”
River snorts. “If you’re such a big deal, then why haven’t you been able to figure out why you’re here?”
John’s nose wrinkles. “I know why I’m here. Well, here as in, in jail. Well-” she pauses and shrugs again, finally looking sheepish. “Okay, you’ve got me. I really don’t know. And I really am sorry. Don’t want to be- disturbing you.”
“Like I said, I don’t mind the company. Besides, you’ve become a good warning sign for- ah!” she says, when the wheezing of the TARDIS echoes down the hall almost on cue. “Now that I really don’t understand,” she says, speaking quickly and turning back to John. “Why do you always show up at the same time as my husband?”
The wall behind the blonde’s eyes cracks open, and for just a moment, River sees a guilt so deep it makes her stomach plunge. But then, as suddenly as always, she is gone.
The Doctor rounds the corner. And with him, all of the anxiety she’d forgotten while John was in the room comes crashing back down on her.
“It’s been awhile, darling,” River says carefully, pressing a gentle smile to her lips. He is smiling at her but his eyes, like Johns’, are a bit closed off, a little wary.
“Sorry about that,” he says, reaching to take her hand and turning her as if they’d been dancing. “Lost track of time.”
“You do that an awful lot for a lord of it,” she says, but she’s already smitten again as he leans over to kiss her forehead. He doesn’t apologize; part of loving the Doctor, at least this version of him, was learning that she may never get a real, direct apology for anything. But he sweeps her away regardless. She can’t even hold it against him.
—————
The Doctor drops her off after the predetermined amount of time. He does not cut it short, and yet River’s heart aches as she heads back for her room. She cannot stand it, being alone in the dark, staring down weeks without him. So she reaches for her journal the second she’s back in her cell. And so she is reading it, for the millionth time, when she hears the little gasp of joy that alerts her to her visitor.
“River,” John murmurs, voice high with delight. And, as is obvious the moment River glances over, high with some very powerful sedatives. She is barely upright, still sitting in that corner that seems to be her favorite spot, her body crumpled in a way that will surely make her very sore the next day, limbs sprawled at awkward angles. Like she’d been tossed to the floor and hadn’t had the ability to sit herself up. “Hello there, beautiful. I really needed to see you today.”
“You look in a right state,” River starts, and it’s true. If John has ever shown up dosed, she certainly is now. Her eyes are only half open even as she stares at River, her gaze drifting lazily up and down her form.
John frowns. It's exceptionally cute, pouty and soft. "Oi. I've had a rough day, is all."
She laughs, loose and breathy. “Yeah, well. Me too. Just got done visiting with my husband.”
“Your husband,” John murmurs, and River smiles and nods, looks away to hide the clench in her chest.
“Don’t get to see him as often as I’d like. Makes the days go by faster, though.”
John makes an odd sound. River glances over, confused and maybe a little alarmed. It sounds like a mix between a whine and a cough.
“I’m sure he’d like to see you more often too,” she says finally.
“Maybe,” River says. For some reason she can feel every unbidden thought she’s ever had rising within her, and she thinks about holding them back. But John’s eyes are wide and sad and staring at her through the dark. “Sometimes I think he visits me only as much as he can stand to be around me.”
John’s mouth falls open and she shifts forward desperately, squirming but unable to sit up. “No- no, that’s not it, I’m sure.”
“How could you possibly know?”
“I just do,” John says, her voice firm. She gives up on struggling reluctantly and flops back again. “I just do.”
River pauses. “Do you have anyone waiting for you, out there?”
The air between them feels heavy and cold. John drops her gaze and stares at the floor, mouth opening and closing. River is about to take it back, to apologize for the intrusion.
But John looks back up. “Yeah, I’ve got a fam. Family. Sort of. Bunch of friends I’m- really close with. In a way.”
“Any visitation rights?” River asks reluctantly, not very hopeful considering where they are, and John’s wry smile gives her all the answer she needs.
“Not for me. Plus, they’re all too far away. Not that that would stop Yaz, but, well. She thinks I’m dead.” River frowns, but John snorts and lets her head fall back, a soft grin spreading on her face. “Yaz would’ve torn this place apart to find me if she could.”
“Is Yaz your wife?”
John freezes and her eyes dart up to meet Rivers. For a moment she stares, mouth fallen open again, and River almost laughs, surprised at how amusing she finds it to strike this random woman dumb. And then John really does laugh. But there is no humor behind it. “No, Yaz isn’t- no. I have a wife, though. But I don’t get to see her very often.”
Something is wrong. John is laughing too much, for a scenario that is not really that funny. The hairs on River’s arm begin to stand up. The laugh is shaky and almost drunk, swinging wildly between pitches, and John has gone even limper against the wall.
“Actually,” John continues, through breathless snorts, “this is more that I’ve seen of her in hundreds of years, can you believe?”
And, slowly, and with a terrible dread, realization starts to rise in River’s mind.
“You always appear just around when my husband show up,” she starts.
“Makes sense,” John murmurs, her eyes fluttering, threatening to close. “TARDIS sends things all wonky. Two of me in the same spot.”
“What do you mean,” River says, but it isn’t really a question. The truth is dawning on her even as she resists it, rejects it entirely for its horror. “What do you mean two of you?”
“Would break some things, being in the same place as past me. Plus, spoilers,” John says, and then chuckles, one hand twitching and her eyes sliding shut. “That drove me absolutely up the wall, when we first met. Spoilers. Infuriating. I’m remembering bits of this now, though. Told you to leave me alone!”
River’s heart goes cold. Her fingertips feel icy, her mouth twitches. “It can’t be,” she breathes. “Oh, my love, it can’t be you. Please don’t be you.”
John - and despite her begging of course it’s him, John Smith, right in front of her all along - tries to lift her head again. Her face is wrinkled with faint regret. “Shouldn’t have said that,” she mutters, her words slurring together.
“That’s why you only show up when my hus-when you’re near.”
“I really-”
“You told me your name, but you never even asked for mine. And you said-” River’s voice breaks and she tightens her hands into fists, grimacing through it. “You said you thought it was wishful thinking, when you saw me. But then it made sense when you realized it was Stormcage.”
“River-” the Doctor tries again, but River does not stop, very fed up with listening and following. She has to force her eyes away, shaking her head.
“You didn’t even question how my husband was visiting me,” she says, starting to laugh a little even as tears burst into her eyes. “You- we’re in a maximum security jail and you didn’t even question for one moment how I could have possibly just been traveling. You know, you are a lot of things, my love, but a good liar is not one of them.”
The Doctor is still slumped against the wall when River’s gaze returns, but she doesn’t look guilty anymore. “Thought maybe I was making you up again,” the Doctor says, and shes smiling wryly now, a little sheepish. River’s heart clenches, wants to shatter, picturing this Doctor alone in the dark, imagining her. Dreaming of her. Wishing she was there.
“How- when are you?” River asks, reaching again for her journal, but the Doctor shakes her head.
“I’m off book. This is-” she trails off, her fuzzy eyes locked on Rivers before dropping to the floor. “I’m past the part of my lives that you are supposed to be in. I’m older than the last time you saw me. In fact, I’m way-” she cringes, screwing her eyes shut and letting her head fall back against the wall with a thud. “Ugh. Sorry. Feel a bit sick.”
“Doctor-” River says, tears flooding her vision. She takes a steadying breath, does not let them fall. “What have they been doing to you?”
The Doctor shakes her head again, her pretty eyes so blown out and hazy that River isn’t sure she can see her anymore. “Just keep… not complying. So they drug me again. More.”
“How long have you been there?”
She isn’t sure she wants to know the answer. She is not sure the Doctor wants to give it, either, by the way her shoulders tense. “A while.”
“Sweetie,” River says, and her voice wobbles again, and the Doctor huffs out a breath that might have been a laugh, might have been a sob. “Please tell me how long they’ve kept you in here.”
“I don’t know for sure,” the Doctor says. “Hard to keep track.” She shifts again, tries to sit up but only manages to slump further down the wall. “I don’t do great alone, ‘specially not this version of me. Makes my head cloudy.”
“Could also be the drugs,” River says, keeping her voice low so that it does not crack. She clings to that kernel of information about this Doctor - she is blonde and she is old and she doesn’t do great alone - and she stores it away in her chest.
The Doctor wrinkles her nose into a grin, laughing silently, and River smiles too, even as tears still threaten behind her eyes. “I’m sorry, I really-”
“Don’t apologize,” River says. “You have nothing to apologize for, you- why are you in here?”
The Doctor stares at her for a moment and then rears back, her eyes going wide. “Oh, River, you would not believe- the Judoon, prancing all around Earth, thinking they’re- thinking they’re just in charge, thinkin’ they can…”
She trails off, her arms held in the air mid gesture until they flop heavily into her lap. She groans again. “Can’t think straight. Too many… too much-”
“It’s okay,” River says. Her fingers are still cold with worry and she longs to go to her, to hold this tiny version of her husband in her arms, but she resists. “It- it will be okay, we just have to come up with a way to get you out of here.”
The Doctor scoffs. “There’s no way. And besides, you should be worried about getting yourself out of here. Ignore me, I’ll be fine.”
“No you won’t. I know you, Doctor, you won’t last in here. You’ve already been here for too long. You don’t deserve to be in here.”
The Doctor’s eyes are still blown and hazy, barely focused on her, but she stares in her direction again. “You don’t deserve to be either.”
“But I’m not, not permanently. You come and take me away, whenever I want. You’re just-” her voice catches again and she frowns, clearing her throat. The Doctor tries to, too. But she ends up coughing, and then she flickers.
River gasps and shoots forward, almost falls off her bed and flat onto her face. Cold terror clenches her heart as she remembers- her husband has just left, and if it’s the weirdness in the time stream caused by the TARDIS bringing this new version to her- “No- Doctor, wait, don’t go-”
The Doctor, the blonde and pretty one, the one drugged out of her mind and collapsed on the floor, smiles at her wearily. “I’ll see you in a bit, my love,” she murmurs. And then she is gone.
————
Time crawls before the Doctor returns. River sits on her cot, knees drawn up to her chest, and stares at the corner where she usually appears. She waits for hours. And then she waits for days.
She cannot ask the current version of her spouse for help. And so she steals instead, gets herself out of the jail and finds a black market dealer nearby. It isn’t very hard, but her heart races the whole time. What if the Doctor was there now, and River was not? What if she was sitting there, alone in the dark, and she was drugged and couldn’t get out of the corner, and River could be comforting her?
There was no way for her to tell if she has missed a visit, of course, but she still ran into the cell as if she’s being chased. No one was there. She digs into the wall when the guards were not around, shoved just next to the corner where he would sit one day, shorter and imprisoned. It takes awhile, breaks her nails and leaves her fingertips bloody, leaves her neck sore from the way she whips around at every sound. She does it anyway.
“I don’t even know if you’re in the future,” River gasps the moment the Doctor reappears in her room. She’s standing this time, seems like she might have been mid-pacing, hands shoved in her pockets, stumbling in her stride when River speaks. “I don’t even… if you’re in the past then I wasted my time.”
“What?” the Doctor asks, startled, staring at her.
“Vortex manipulator. It’s in the wall behind you,” River says, and the Doctor whirls and crouches to look at the wall, her fingers tracing along where River had chipped and clawed her way into it. “I know you aren’t a fan, and it’s a pretty rudimentary model, but-”
“Oh, River,” the Doctor breathes, and chills run up River’s spine. Her name on a new Doctor’s lips again. “This is brilliant.” She rises, dust and dirt falling from her hands, a vortex manipulator clutched in her hand.
“Oh, thank the stars. You are in the future. Well, that means it’s been there for a few centuries,” River says. “Hopefully it still works.”
The Doctor is already fiddling with it, her nose scrunching up adorably, and River wants to fly across the room and kiss it. “It should, and if it doesn’t I can- ooh!” she sticks her fingers along its edge and twists some wires, and it’s sparking to life, beeping in her hands. River sighs with relief, smiling, and the Doctor looks up at her and positively beams.
It’s like every positive emotion River has ever felt floods into her system, all at once. The Doctor saved by her; the Doctor, small and kind and smiling and beautiful, and River has rescued her. Her chest aches with it, her cheeks are sore from smiling. She longs to hold her.
"I'm sorry," is all she can manage, forcing her words not to crack.
But the Doctor just frowns. "You have nothing to be sorry for. Nothing at all."
River sighs and throws her arms out. "But you're- you're here, and you shouldn't be, and it's miserable and I'm sorry, I'm just-"
The Doctor shakes her head. "No, love, don't. I'm sorry."
Silence falls between them for a beat, and then another. This Doctor looks up - because she's shorter than her, River can hardly believe it, laughter threatening to bubble up again in the back of her throat - with deep, dark eyes. Sincere eyes. Eyes that know the truth.
"I forgive you," River says. And it's the truth, too.
She lifts her arm, fingers outstretched, reaching for- something, anything, to caress her cheek, or to hug her, or something, River reaches. But the Doctor steps back.
“We aren’t supposed to meet,” she says. “Us together, ripping open the time stream because past me is about to show up, we shouldn’t touch.”
She’s right. Maddeningly, horrifically, terribly right. River loathes her for it, loathes her stupid rules that hold the universe in place, hates her for sacrificing herself for others over and over and never thinking of what that might do to her wife. Despises the way this body’s eyes sparkle, huge and open and beautiful, new but familiar, and despises the way she wants to spend a thousand years looking into them. She wonders what their life would be, herself and this Doctor. She wonders who this Doctor is. The fact that she will never find out radiates from those eyes, pierces her chest.
“I- I hate you,” River whispers, her eyes hot and blurry.
The Doctor grins again. “No, you don’t.”
A long moment passes between them. River lets her gave wander, taking in every line, every out of place hair, the color of her socks.
“Another time?” River says finally, tears streaming down her cheeks, and she begs him, in the back of her mind, to give her this.
The Doctor’s grin melts into a smile. It is soft and it crinkles her eyes. And this body, small and strong and blonde, gives. “Another time.”
It’s a lie. They both know it. But she says it like she is going to come back.
Then, with a crack and a flash of light, she is gone.
And around the corner comes her husband.
“So!” he shouts, and he’s wearing a stupid hat so she knows they’re going somewhere special. But he doesn’t even get to launch into his preamble before she reaches out and pulls him into a hug, pressing her lips to his cheek and then nuzzling in, sighing.
“What was that for?” he asks, when she leans back and looks up at him, still blinking away tears.
“It wasn’t for you,” River says, stepping back. “It was for her.” She gestures into the dark of the cell. Clears her throat, again, because tears are still maddeningly close to falling from her eyes.
The Doctor pauses and nods, crossing his arms. “Ah. Hmm. So you, uh-”
"I figured it out," River says, shaking her head. “You don’t have to- it’s okay. Just- I might need a minute, is all.”
And she gives herself one, just a moment of regretful stillness, staring into the darkened cell that she knows will no longer be occasionally lit with blonde. River feels the Doctor’s hand hover over her shoulder, and then fall back to his side. She reaches out without looking and takes it.
——————
"But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that even though I do not know you, and even though I may not meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you: I love you.
With all my heart.
I love you."