Work Text:
Christmas...is strange. It’s hailed as “The Most Wonderful Time of The Year” even well into the 51st century—the bright lights and cozy family gatherings, a celebration of delicious food and the excitement of reaching the much-anticipated end of a quest for the perfect gift. A time to breathe, relax even, and appreciate the world around you. All of which is theoretically well and good, but the oversaturation of happiness, of this emphasis on simply enjoying your own humanity, can feel...
Suffocating.
She adored this, once. But seeing mothers and fathers play in the snow with their children, walking into a restaurant filled-to-the-brim with families who look so content and so completely at peace...it just reminds her of all of the Christmases she used to spend with her parents.
The kind of Christmases she’ll never get to have again.
And then, of course, if you’re in a bad mood on Christmas, you’re a buzzkill. Why can’t you be happy on this one holiday where everyone is supposed to smile and get along and talk at length about how much they love being alive.
Which is a good question, now that she thinks about it. Why can’t she. It’s only one day, and it’s a day her husband happens to hold quite a bit of affection for. There’s no excuse for the sad, tender part of her heart to keep digging its heels in for the next twenty-four hours. Or whatever the anatomical equivalent of the “heels” of an internal organ is. Also, she has two hearts, not one, so this choice of idiom is...extremely unhelpful, on multiple levels.
She, blessedly, has made it through dinner without sobbing (although she did come close when she saw a woman with bright red hair out of the corner of her eye on the way to the toilet. This was before she realized that the shade was a bit too loud, too artificial, to be a true match). It will be easier to stay sane, she thinks, once she and the Doctor get back to the TARDIS. The ship promises a warm bed, a near-infinite selection of books, and exactly no other people around—no families, no people who vaguely look like her dead parents. No accidental living reminders.
God, she’s tired.
Her husband walks alongside her, his hand on the small of her back and obviously delighted by the gentle snowfall, and she wonders why nothing is enough for her.
Because, no he’s not Amy, or Rory, or Amy and Rory, but River does have someone she loves, someone who is here. Living and breathing and wanting to be here, choosing to be here. She’s not alone. She’s not even contending with a version of him who doesn’t know who she is. Objectively, this is the closest to “stable” she could ever hope for, and she’s still constantly on the verge of crying. Of screaming and thrashing over the unfairness of the world—which, fairness is an incredibly stupid thing to expect from the world in the first place, when you’re the kind of person she is.
Factually-speaking, she isn’t lonely...but it still rather feels like she is, somehow. A spouse is a spouse; not a parent, not someone who grew up with you. For all of the wonderful, beautiful things The Doctor is, he’s not her best friends.
“—ver?”
Oh. She hadn’t realized he’d been talking.
“Hmm?”
Her husband’s face is lined with a soft, earnest sort of worry. “Are you alright? You haven’t said anything the entire walk back.”
“Just deep in thought, sweetie.” And this dance, at least, she knows. Brushing off her problems. Pretending to be fine. Maintaining an exterior solely made up of the better parts of herself to avoid breaking something. “Do you still have any of that wine from Beria-6?”
Her husband, apparently, was not aware they ever had wine from Beria-6 in the first place. “What did I tell you about hiding things from me,” he chides at the kitchen ceiling. The TARDIS, in a cheeky gesture of protest, changes the color of the overhead lighting to orange, then to a sort of baby blue, switching rapidly between the two several times before settling back to normal.
River rolls her eyes good-naturedly. “Hush, you two.” And this is good. This is okay. This is silly and lighthearted and colored (no pun intended) with fondness, everything this holiday is supposed to be. Everything it’s expected to be.
And while she normally wouldn’t give a damn about “expectations,” she knows, as much as he’s tried to hide it, that her husband has been looking forward to this time of year. She’s not going to muddy up an occasion he’s particularly fond of by wallowing in the past and trekking its dregs all over the carpet. And once she gets her hands on this particularly exquisite bottle of wine, it will be smooth sailing for the rest of the evening.
She opens the fridge and roots around the top shelf a little before spotting the telltale pistachio-green of the bottle. After moving the items around it to clear a path, her fingers close around its middle and lift it halfway out of the fridge, and that’s when she makes the mistake of actually, really looking at it.
Because while she clearly remembered the taste of the wine and the hue of the bottle...
She had forgotten what it was they‘d chosen as their logo.
A centurion sword. Like the one her father...her father used to......
For at least the millionth time, she wonders why she has to be so weak. What good is augmented biology if it can’t do anything about this. There’s an empty cavern where her chest should be, and no amount of accelerated healing is ever going to fix that.
Because God, they fought so hard for her. River was there: at Demon’s Run. In Berlin. She saw it. They were willing to die and willing to kill to save her, to get her life back on track. And they always had her round for holidays, they went to the theatre with her when she was between jobs and starting to get bored, and her father always listened to her without complaint when she was struggling with the emotional complications of her and The Doctor’s timelines, and her mother knew exactly what kind of person she was, the kinds of things she’d done, and never, ever judged her, and these people knew her, they knew everything about her and still chose to love her unconditionally, they loved her unconditionally, and they were willing to sit by her in the hospital and to hold her when she was sad, and fucking hell she lost so much.
She vaguely registers The Doctor say something that might be her name, but it doesn’t matter. Right now she’s back in that graveyard, watching her parents disappear from the timeline in front of her, and in a few seconds she’s probably going to start hyperventilating, if not have a complete breakdown on the kitchen floor.
The fridge door is still open, and the bottle is still halfway between the shelf and her chest, and she’s still staring at the godforsaken logo, and it is going to take a miracle to bring herself out of this.
There’s a light touch on her shoulder, a murmured phrase she can’t make out, and then her husband takes the bottle of wine from her, setting it down on the counter with a small clink.
He places a hand under her chin and guides her face to look at him. “River how long has it been? Since Manhattan?” His eyes glance over to the for-now-deserted bottle, and oh, of course he would realize what brought this on, of course he would.
“I...I’m...It’s...” And suddenly, she’s on the ground—kneeling, curled in on herself while her vision blurs confusingly with what she belatedly realizes are tears.
After a few disorienting seconds (or maybe it’s a few disorienting hours, she wouldn’t really know with the state she’s in), he’s sitting next to her on the floor, carefully cradling her body against his, running one of his hands through her hair and down her back.
“It’s al...well, it’s not alright. But it’s allowed not to be alright.” And it sounds so compassionate, so genuine, that she almost believes him. Believes that she’s allowed to feel this. Feel it on this particular day, in front of him. Feel it in a way that makes it so painfully clear just how damaged she is.
“You’re safe here,” he says, and she sobs.
He lets her cry herself out, patient and gentle the entire time. By the time she’s gained a foothold back in reality, she is...exhausted. She untangles herself from where they’re meshed together on the floor while gratitude and shame war against each other inside her chest, and curses the fact that she couldn’t just keep herself together for another four or five hours.
“How are you?” He asks. And there’s that earnestness again, the one that makes her start to believe that maybe the world is good—or at least, that it is sometimes.
She wants to lie, say that everything is better now and that it won’t come up again; but she knows she’s not in a position to make that believable. Still, she should...well, she should probably say something.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers hoarsely. Because it’s true.
“For what?”
“Well I properly fucked up your evening, didn’t I?”
“You didn’t ‘fuck up’ anything. And if anyone’s evening got the short end of the stick tonight, it’s yours.”
She sighs. “You shouldn’t be responsible for...this. It’s not your job.”
The expression on his face is so overtly shocked it would be almost comical in any other context. “Then what the fuck is my job?”
There’s a long pause while she considers him, letting what he asked wash over her in a way that she normally tries to avoid. "You really want to help me." It's not a question.
His face softens, into something almost beatifically tender. "I always have."
If she's not careful, she's going to cry again, albeit for a much different reason.
"I'm sorry," she says a second time, hating how pathetic and small her voice sounds.
"River, you don't—"
"I know you love Christmas." She chokes on a bitter fraction of a laugh. " I couldn't even manage to let you have that. The one day we’re all meant to be happy."
"You're not obligated to be cheerful just because it's Christmas."
"Why not? Everyone else seems to think so."
"Since when do you care what anyone else thinks?"
And...well, she doesn't. But she does care about him. What he wants.
"But it's important to you."
"I'll live."
He takes a moment, looking thoughtful, before picking himself up off the floor—because, yes, she realizes, they’re both still on the floor—and once he’s fully standing, offering a hand to her so she can haul herself up too. “You know,” he continues, “Contractual happiness is usually considered a premise for a horror story.”
She gives another fractional-chuckle, lacking the bitterness of the previous one. “I suppose you’re right.”
He usually is. Though she tries to refrain from telling him that just too often.
Everything is calm for all of three seconds before—“It’s been about two-and-a-half years,” she blurts nonsensically, without giving herself permission.
He blinks, curious. “Since?”
“Since my parents...” She trails off, exhaling shakily.
“Ah.”
“It happened a little over a year and half before you found me.”
He nods.
“And...a lot has happened, since then. You happened. And over two years is a long time, it should be easier, by now. But it isn’t.”
“Two and a half years isn’t really that much time.”
“It should be enough. I should be able to...to handle it.”
“Why?”
She wonders if he’s somehow recently sustained a concussion without her knowledge. “What do you mean why?”
“Why should you be expected to move on so easily from something as devastating as losing your family? Why should anyone?”
“Because I have other things in my life! I have a job! I have...this,” She gestures widely around the kitchen.
“Yes, but you don’t have them.”
And something...breaks. “No,” she bites out, “I don’t. Not anymore. Not ever again, do you have ANY idea what that’s like!” She can’t believe she brought this up again, that she bothered continuing this conversation. She feels completely out-of-control and not in the fun, rebellious way.
His hand comes up to rest on her cheek, his calloused fingers feeling somehow impossibly-soft. “River...I’m thousands of years old. Do you really think I don’t understand loss?”
Tears gather in the corner of her eyes again, and as suddenly as it came, her anger is gone, overwritten by just how thoroughly drained she is. She can’t even bring herself to say anything else. She tries; but the words stick in her brain half-formed, unable to make the transfer to actual speech. Unsure of what else to do, she covers the hand he has on her cheek with her own, twining the tips of her fingers through his.
“What can I do? What do you want?” he asks. And...God, she doesn’t know. He can’t give her her parents back, and he can’t replace what they were to her. He can’t reach into her hearts and rip out her grief so she doesn’t have to feel it anymore. She could try talking about it, but she’s so tired of talking about it, she’s done that enough—not with him, but in the mirror, to herself. To her diary. To the pictures of Amy and Rory she keeps in a box under her bed. She can’t give him an answer because there is no answer; the only thing left is...
Well, it’s what she’d said earlier, isn’t it. In her head, during her meltdown.
“I think...all any of us really want is someone to hold us when we’re sad.”
There’s something very raw, on his face. It’s almost frightening, in how vulnerable it is, how uninhibited. “I can do that.” And the phrase is so tender and so full of care that it’s almost too much for her.
“You don’t have to, you know. It’s alright if—”
“River. Please, let me.”
Her heart feels like it’s about to drill through her chest, and it’s starting to get a bit difficult to breathe, but it’s...not awful, somehow. Not when he’s looking at her with so much kindness and devotion, offering the one thing she hadn’t realized she’d been aching for during the past two and a half years.
“Okay,” she breathes—a shaky, feeble little noise. “Okay.” She steps wordlessly into him, cheek pressed against his chest, tucking herself under his chin. She lays her palms gently on his shoulders, curling her fingers around them with a delicate-ness that feels very unlike her. The feel of his clavicle under her hands is oddly grounding, and she can hear the faint double-beat of his hearts, soothing in its steadiness.
And while this version of him is much less overtly tactile, it’s immediate—automatic, even—the way he wraps his arms around her, with one of his hands on her back, slightly bunching the fabric of her shirt, and the other one buried somewhere in her hair.
Everything—the ball of rage spinning in her ribs, the tension that’s burrowed its way into her muscles, the horrible, horrible thought that maybe she deserves to feel like this, that she’s always deserved to feel like this—all of it slips out of her, through her skin and into the air around them, before finally, mercifully...
It dissipates.
“Thank you,” she murmurs, and this, she thinks, might be what it means to really love someone.
She breathes in and out a few more times, enjoying this moment of relative peace, before stepping back from him, bringing her hands back down to her sides. There are so many different feelings flickering across his face, to the point where it’d probably take her several hours to pick out and name them all. She wants to clarify exactly what she’s thanking him for, but there might not be enough time in the world, (or in the universe, even) for that. The best she can do, probably, is acknowledge how heavy this all is. How taxing it’s undoubtedly been on him.
"I'm sor—"
"If you apologize again, I'm going to put on the 3067 New Galaxy Theatre production of As You Like It."
"The one with Elias Carter?! He didn't even understand the base text of the play--"
"Exactly."
And she lets out a real laugh, this time. She is so, so glad he’s here.
"Well, provided we don't watch any terrible Shakespeare, I think we can still salvage the evening."
Thankfully, there is no subpar theatre of any kind. There is, instead, a quite lovely concert on radio, performed by Darillium’s professional choir. They write most of their own pieces, incorporating the Towers’ song into the arrangements, to where it’s almost its own voice section; a collaboration with the planet they live on. Its uniquely beautiful, in a way that makes something inside of her start singing, too. And like all beautiful things, it is over far, far too quickly.
As the announcer makes her perfunctory closing remarks, River glances across the table at her husband, who is staring far too intently at his wine glass. It’s as if he’s trying to discern the exact chemical composition of his drink.
“It’s just pinot grigio, honey.”
“No, this is...They put something in this. It’s stronger than usual.”
“Or maybe this body is even more of a lightweight than the last one.”
He scoffs. “ ‘Lightweight’ doesn’t even begin to cover it. That man had the physical constitution of a hamster. ”
She gasps in mock-outrage. “That’s my husband you’re talking about.”
“Yes, well I doubt he would have ever been able to get his hands on your present.”
Her...oh. “Sweetie, you didn’t have to get me anything.”
A smug, enigmatic smile spreads across his face, and it makes her want to kiss him senseless. Which probably wouldn’t help that ego of his, so she resists the impulse.
(For now.)
He reaches into the inner pocket of his jacket—bigger on the inside—and produces a slender, black, rectangular box, which he then sets down on the table, directly in front of her. The box is so sleekly-made she can’t even see the hinges on it, and its appearance offers no clue as to what might be inside. “Open it,” her husband urges, eyes sparkling with mirth.
Ever eager to discover the unknown, River lifts the lid. And what she sees makes her fall, somehow, impossibly, even more in love with him.
It’s an absolutely gorgeous fountain pen—a texture like polished marble, looking sapphire-blue when it catches the light one way, crimson red when it catches it another. There’s a little band of gold around the middle, and an ornately-engraved crescent moon just above the grip. But the wild fluttering in River’s abdomen is due to much more than just the striking design.
“This was Eiya Stravoko’s,” she marvels. Famed 39th century archaeologist and a pioneer of artifact preservation techniques. She was responsible for recovering information on at least four cultures that were thought permanently lost to time, and is, to this day, the only living creature to have dug up a Brusquian Crystal.
...River is, to put it tactfully, a fan.
“Yes, it was,” her husband confirms. “If I remember correctly, it’s the pen she wrote her first manuscript with.”
She’s so dumbstruck it doesn’t even occur to her to tell him that she already knows. “You...you don’t even like archaeology.”
“No. But you do. You love it, actually.”
A wave of almost violent sentimentality crashes over her; River Song is not one to get giddy, but there’s no other way to describe what she feels right now. “How did you even find this?”
“You’re not the only one who’s good at research.” That smug smile is back, and it’s getting much, much harder to refrain from kissing it off of him.
“Is that so?”
His smirk widens. She feels like one of her hearts might stop. Maybe both.
Luckily, she brings herself back to lucidity long enough to ask the other question simmering in the back of her brain. “When did you get this? It can’t have just been sitting in a boutique somewhere waiting to be ordered online, you would have had to go and retrieve it. I don’t remember you leaving.”
“Well, you’re not the only one who can confiscate the TARDIS while your spouse isn’t looking, either.”
Oh, forget kissing him, she wants to drag him to the nearest corner and shag him mercilessly.
“You’re...” God, she’s going to embarrass herself if she finishes that sentence. Which is a rare feat, given how shameless she is. “Thank you,” she says instead, practically sighing.
“Merry Christmas, River.”
And it is. Somehow, in spite of everything. Merry.
Happy.
Perhaps there’s something to this holiday after all.