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An ancient blue book he dare not touch, half a closet full of a clothes that still smell like her and a wedding ring she hardly ever wore.
After the Towers, it’s all he has left.
It’s not nearly enough but he clings to his meager possessions like the Fisher King, shoring his fragments against the ruins. He stares at her diary for hours at a time, fingers aching from clenching his hands into tight fists – he will not read it. Reading it means it’s over, it means there are no more spoilers to protect and that is something he is not ready to face. He may never be ready.
More often than not, when he opens his closet in the morning and finds her things mixed among his, he ends up staring at her favorite dress or those boots she used to trek everywhere in, and he loses track of time as he lingers in the doorway of their closet and just breathes her in – that mingled scent of the vortex and expensive perfume that still clings to everything she owned. He wears her wedding ring on a long chain around his neck. He tucks it under his clothes and takes comfort in the press of it against his skin, in knowing that it was hers and it’s always near, should he need to take it out and remember.
When the grief is not so crippling that it renders him a useless shell of a man, he talks to her. He lies awake at night, resolutely not looking at the empty side of the bed as he recounts his day. He reads aloud from her favorite books and pretends she is listening. He disappears beneath the console with his tools and goggles, muttering that yes, he does know what he’s doing, thank you very much, wife. Running down corridors chased by an angry mob of some sort – human or alien, they’re very fond of angry mobs – he presses his hand to the ring beneath his shirt and says could really use your gun arm right now, dear.
It helps to pretend she’s still with him, that she can hear him and that maybe she’s out there somewhere, rolling her eyes. He likes to pretend she’s still free to roam the universe, the way she was always meant to. But she isn’t and he knows it. She’s trapped in a library date core because he isn’t clever enough to save her. He hovers above the planet to pay his respects in the only way he can, at the only tomb she has, and hates himself. She deserved better from him while she was alive and she deserves better now.
In the end, he chooses Leadworth – because New York is still too fresh, too painful, and because his wife had been right. He really is a sentimental idiot. The gravestone is simple but elegant, bearing only her name. He stays just long enough to see it put up, on its own under a tree with bright pink cherry blossoms, before stumbling back to the TARDIS, fingers fumbling for the chain around his neck as tears blur his eyes.
After that, he avoids her grave like the plague itself. It’s enough to know that it’s there; that he gave her this last normal thing to make up for everything he couldn’t give her while she was alive. But the gravestone is always there in the back of his mind, much the way River herself always was – and still is. There were days when it was all he could do to wait for his companions to fall asleep so he could sneak away and pick her up, take her somewhere amazing. Now, he finds that the gravestone calls to him instead, a macabre temptation that will not leave him no matter what he does or where he goes.
April
He waits until their anniversary and comes with a bouquet of red and violet fuchsias, stepping out of the TARDIS hesitantly. The cherry blossoms are falling from the tree and fluttering to rest at River’s grave, as if nature itself wants to pay homage to this miracle of a woman who danced through stars and loved more fiercely than anyone the universe has ever known. The bronze stone glitters in the sunlight and the Doctor approaches it slowly, his hearts pounding.
It’s a beautiful sight but it only makes him feel nauseous. It shouldn’t be beautiful here – nothing should be beautiful without her and it enrages him that even here, the one place he should be safe to grieve, the world is still not as bereaved as he is. How can this little town dare to be so picturesque when it houses the symbol of the loss of his beloved?
Clutching the flowers in his trembling grip, he swallows hard, eyes tracing over the letters etched deeply into stone. River Song. He sinks to his knees and presses his fingertips to her name, whispering, “Hi, honey.”
Suddenly, there’s a lump in his throat the size of a small planet and try as he might, the words cannot find their way around it. The sun shines against his back, the birds chirp and in the distance, he hears the cheerful conversation of people passing by the graveyard. It’s all wrong.
Tiny little Leadworth is as dull and cheery as it’s always been but never before has it been so intolerable to him. His wife is dead and this empty grave is the only place he has to pay his respects, aside from a shadow-eaten planet. All he asks is for the sun to stop shining and the world to stop turning as he grieves. But it goes on without her – adventures are had, stars are born, entire species live and laugh and die – and no one spares a thought to the woman who walked into his life and dragged him kicking and screaming into the light.
It makes him so overwhelmingly angry that he can’t breathe. His throat closes up, bile and tears choking him, and the Doctor bows his head, gasping for air as his fingers scrabble for the chain around his neck. He is suffocating, his head full of River, of all the things he should have said or done, and worse, the things he never should have said or done, his regrets warring with the unrelenting sun and the laughter in the distance – the unfairness of a world that doesn’t know and furthermore doesn’t care that the most precious being to ever enter his life has gone from it, and will never come back again.
Choking on a sob, the Doctor’s hand finally closes around River’s wedding ring and he wheezes, drawing in a shaky lungful of air. His chest heaves, his limbs shake, and tears blur his eyes. He clutches the ring so tightly it digs painfully into his palm but he welcomes it, clings to it like an anchor to keep him from drowning. Eventually, his racing hearts begin to slow and thoughts of River recede like the tide, always threatening to overwhelm him again.
The episode leaves him drained, and he stays there on his knees for a long time, staring at her name carved in stone as cherry blossoms fall all around him.
October
The tree is lifeless and bare now, which he finds appropriate. The sight of it just as empty as he feels makes breathing a little easier. He feels a kinship with the tree now, as if it knows the same loss he does. The sun hides behind the clouds and the air is far too chilly for anyone to be out and about at this time of the evening. Little Leadworth is quiet as a church mouse and for that, the Doctor is thankful.
He settles onto the grass and pushes away the dead leaves gathered around River’s grave, tenderly tracing his fingers over her name. Setting a bouquet of orange heleniums at the foot of her headstone, the Doctor covers his face with his hands and sighs shakily. “Sorry it’s been so long, dear,” he whispers through his fingers. “I tried running away. But you always manage to catch up with me.”
Around him, the wind picks up, sending a chill through his old bones. He shivers and turns up the collar of his greatcoat, burying his nose in it. He listens to the wind whistle through dead trees and scatter the brittle leaves littering the ground, wondering idly what it was about autumn that River had loved so much. It’s cold and dreary and altogether too rainy for his liking.
Yes, he can almost hear her say, with that tiny little smirk and that sparkle in her eyes, but all the more reason for you to stay in bed to keep me warm, my love.
He bites the inside of his cheek. “I never stayed still long enough, did I? I wish I had.” Swallowing the ever-present lump in his throat, he shuts his eyes. “I wish I’d spent more time just holding you. You’d have liked that, I think.”
The gravestone remains as stoically silent as ever.
“But you knew, didn’t you?” He looks imploringly at her name. “You knew that I – more than anyone, River - ”
He cannot finish and the only reply he receives is wind rustling dead leaves. The Doctor shuts his eyes and clutches the chain around his neck like a lifeline.
December
The church across from the graveyard is having its candlelight service and the Doctor can hear them singing hymns as he treks across the powdery snow covering the ground. Carrying a handful of bright red poinsettias, he watches his breath cloud in the cold night air and wonders what it must be like, having such a small, humany life – church on Christmas Eve and the warmth of family and friends, laughter and rosy cheeks. The closest he ever came to having it himself was with River and the Ponds – his family.
“All is calm, all is bright…”
The year is 2015 and right now in London, he’s sitting around a table with them all, Rory watching him warily as he tries to cut into the turkey with his sonic, Amy laughing at his disastrous attempt and River’s hand warm in his, her smiling lips against his jaw. He thought about going there and watching the celebration through a window – just to see their faces again, to remind himself that he was happy once – but he knows he can’t risk crossing his own timeline. So he’d gone here instead, barred from the past and only able to face his rather bleak present. He feels like an orphaned child, standing out in the cold with nothing but memories of what used to be to keep him warm.
Crouching in front of her gravestone, his coat brushing the snow beneath him, the Doctor sets down his usual offering of flowers and brushes away the light dusting of snow covering the top of the grave. “I’d say Merry Christmas,” he says softly, his smile humorless, “but you hate Christmas.” He shuts his eyes, pained. “Hated, I suppose.”
It’s difficult to think of someone in past tense when he carries her with him always, when she’s probably running through every book the universe has ever known, burning brightly and just beyond his reach.
He huffs. “How can you hate Christmas, River? There are presents.”
“Glories stream from heaven afar…”
“Though, I suppose you didn’t get many of those growing up.”
Which is his fault, like everything else about River’s tragic past. He’ll never understand why she chose to love him instead of destroy him. But that was River – contradictory to the very last. She thrived on keeping him on his toes, constantly guessing whether she’d slap him or kiss him. And as much as he deserved every single one of those slaps, they paled in comparison to the number of kisses he didn’t deserve that she gave freely, willingly, and with aching tenderness. He’d give stars and planets, the universe itself, for just one more.
“I made up for it, didn’t I?” He asks, smiling faintly as he remembers that Christmas in their early days of marriage, when he’d taken her to a toy store and demanded she pick out anything and everything she wanted. They’d run through the store like giddy kids, laughing and tossing anything that looked mildly entertaining into their shopping cart – blocks and Mr. Potato Heads, Etch-A-Sketches and puzzles, Easy Bake Ovens and big green Hulk hands, swords and light sabers, scarily interactive baby dolls and enough G.I. Joes to build an army. They’d taken their treasures back to the TARDIS and spent hours opening packages and playing with the toys like overgrown children.
When they’d had their fun, they’d dropped it all off at an orphanage in New York. So they have a reason to smile, River had said. And he’d kissed her and called her amazing, just to see her smile too.
“With the dawn of redeeming grace…”
“I tried, anyway. I don’t know if I ever quite managed. Hard to make up for kidnapping, brainwashing and a prison sentence with a few thousand nights and a trip to a toy store.” He smiles bitterly. “You’d say I had nothing to make up for.”
He can see her face in his mind; see the frown she’d be wearing if she could hear him right now, her hands settled on her hips and her trigger finger twitching. She always hated it when he blamed himself but she isn’t here now, and that’s his fault too. The Doctor presses a hand to his chest, feeling her wedding ring beneath his shirt. “I’m sorry, my love.”
January
In lieu of flowers, he brings a bottle of champagne this time – a little something to ring in the New Year. She loved New Year’s celebrations. Where the Doctor saw nothing but broken resolutions and people marking another year of bumbling through a life that is over far too quickly, River saw hope. Hope that things would get better; that somehow, all the trials and tribulations of life meant something, that promises would be kept. Change is always possible if you really want it, sweetie, she’d say, smiling proudly up at him. I’m living proof.
He’d tap her on the nose with a fond smile. My bespoke psychopath.
In any case, it was logic he couldn’t refute, so the Doctor indulged her, taking her to celebrations around the world and even a few off planet. It made her happy, made her give him that smile that sped up his hearts. He certainly wasn’t opposed to the fireworks. And they both rather enjoyed the traditional kiss at the stroke of midnight.
He’s a bit late tonight, with only a couple of minutes to spare, so he walks quickly and sets the bottle of champagne on the ground, tilting it to lean against her headstone as he settles onto the grass. There hadn’t been any snow this year but it’s still bone-chillingly cold and the Doctor shivers, wrapping his coat tighter around his frame.
“Yes, I know,” he mutters, giving the gravestone his customary fond caress, fingers tracing over her name. His hearts still clench every time but he ignores it. “I tried to get here earlier, honest, River. But there was a revolution on Amanopia. You know how long those things take to wrap up.”
The grave is as silent as well, a grave, he supposes.
He doesn’t let the lack of response deter him, holding up the champagne triumphantly. “Your favorite.” He smiles fondly, and it’s just a little broken around the edges. “Always used to make you so handsy. Do you remember that time on Morok?” He chokes out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “Right in front of their chief, River!”
He imagines her unashamed, smug grin and a lump rises to his throat.
A group of teenagers down the street begins counting down from ten as loudly as they can, making sure all of quiet Leadworth is awake to ring in the New Year. They sound excited and happy, joyous in their brief little lives and for a moment; the Doctor can almost imagine what it was River had so loved about this tradition.
Five!
He shuts his eyes and remembers.
Four!
River in a gorgeous, sparkling dress, her hair wild around her face, her smile soft and her eyes full of anticipation. He wrapped his arms around her, his nose brushing hers and his beaming grin always sent her into a fit of uncharacteristic giggles his hearts always rejoiced to hear.
Three!
She swayed toward him, her laughter fading as his lips hovered over hers. So close, yet not quite touching, and they’d both forget to breathe.
Two!
He wound his fingers through her curls, the anticipation enough to make his hands shake. River looked up into his eyes and in that one tiny little moment, he was left stunned in the wake of such unconditional love shining in that gaze. It made not kissing her all the more torturous.
One!
Their kisses were special – unlike anything the Doctor had ever experienced before. Each one was like a snowflake, unique every time but always, always beautiful. River’s kisses filled him with heat and light, made his breath stutter and his hearts race, his fingers tingle and his head spin. But the universe itself would slow to a crawl, time would stop and twist its winding path around them and there was nothing quite so important as River’s mouth on his, her curves under his hands.
Hand closed around her wedding ring, the Doctor presses it to his lips as down the street, people cheer in celebration and fireworks explode overhead. “Happy New Year, honey.”
February
The graveyard is dotted with red roses – the church community across the street had left them on the graves in honor of Valentine’s Day – and the Doctor gives a wobbly smile at the sight of one at the foot of River’s grave. Tightening his grip on the snowdrops in his hand, he stoops and picks up the rose, tucking it into the white bouquet to give it a splash of color.
It hasn’t quite been a month since he was here last and the time between his visits is growing shorter as the months pass. He knows it isn’t helping, clinging to an empty grave and refusing to move on with his life. He tries – he has adventures and runs, makes friends and sometimes he even laughs. But River is always there in the back of his mind; anchoring him to a past he isn’t quite ready to let go of yet. He doesn’t talk to her out loud anymore – only here, when he can look at her name and pretend she’s listening. Whenever he can manage to almost feel happy again, shame floods through him so sharply it freezes him in his tracks. Being happy is good, he knows. River would want him to be happy. He’s terrified, all the same. Of forgetting her, of making her sacrifice mean less just by smiling.
River would hate it and the last thing he wants is to dishonor her or the lives she had given him by wasting away. So he’s here to say goodbye. Valentine’s Day seemed like as good a day as any.
He never celebrated it, proclaiming it far too humany and commercialized. He didn’t need a day to tell his wife he loved her – he told her every day, showed her with his actions. He didn’t complain (much) about her guns and let her fly his ship, made her laugh and kissed her breathless. They didn’t need a holiday. It didn’t stop River from sending him fake distress calls just to get him to show up on the aforementioned holiday. She would usually greet him in something red and slinky, pushing him against the console and making him forget, just for a little while, why he detested Valentine’s Day at all. He wishes now that he hadn’t been so obstinate about it. It was important to River, so it should have been important to him. What was the harm in indulging her?
Crouching in front of her grave, the Doctor sets down his customary offering and takes a moment to gather his thoughts, wondering why he’s even bothering at all. She can’t hear him. He should just get up and leave, head back into the TARDIS and fly away, forgetting all about this empty grave. But he stays rooted to the spot, fingers clenched in the grass beneath him in an effort not to clutch at the chain around his neck that has become a crutch – a buoy keeping him afloat.
“I won’t be back,” he says hoarsely. “Not for a while – maybe not ever.”
The Doctor grits his teeth, swallowing past the lump in his throat.
“I’m just a mad old man talking to thin air and I can’t do it anymore. It hurts, River.” He squeezes his eyes shut, forcefully pushing back the tears. “Forgetting you isn’t an option but neither is this – this obsession with an empty tomb. Your memory deserves better.”
In the distance, the church bells begin to peal and he opens his eyes to stare at her grave one last time. Kissing his fingertips, he reaches out with a trembling hand and presses them to her name.
“Goodbye, River.”
March
It’s her birthday.
He doesn’t visit her.
April
He steps out of the TARDIS and halts at the sight of bright pink cherry blossoms. At his back, the Old Girl hums her encouragement and he breathes out quietly, steeling himself as he steps forward into the graveyard. It’s been six months from his point of view and as it turns out, running from River Song isn’t any easier now than it had been while she was alive. Running also isn’t nearly as fun anymore without her to run with – he hasn’t tried to run from her in centuries.
Besides, he’d already missed her birthday. He couldn’t miss their anniversary as well. Not once, in all the years they were together did he ever forget an anniversary. He isn’t about to start now, just because she can’t celebrate it with him anymore.
Laying a bouquet of purple asters at the foot of the grave, the Doctor kneels in front of it and purses his lips, his shoulders slouching in defeat. “Running didn’t work,” he confesses in a whisper. “Nothing works. I think you’re always going to be with me, River Song. Haunting my footsteps.”
The gravestone, he notices, shines in the sun just as beautifully as it had the last time he’d visited in the spring and he silently thanks the caretaker for looking after it even as he berates himself for not doing it on his own.
“I’m sorry.” Tears fill his eyes and he drops his gaze to the ground, ashamed. “I won’t leave you again. I promise.”
“You’d better not.”
His eyes widen and he fights not to turn around at sound of that voice behind him. It’s finally happened. He has been talking to thin air for so long that it has finally started to talk back. Biting the inside of his cheek to keep the anguished sob at bay, the Doctor curls in on himself and presses his forehead to the gravestone in front of him. “I don’t care,” he breathes. “I don’t care if I’m mad. Don’t go. Please -”
A shadow falls over him.
“Doctor.” The voice is closer now, soft and tender in the way River’s voice always was when she thought he was being a lovely moron, and he flinches. “Turn around, you sentimental idiot.”
Swallowing hard, he obeys – slowly and with the utmost hesitance. Standing over him, outlined by the sun and looking radiant dressed all in white, is his beloved wife. He’s never seen her dressed all in white, not even on any of their wedding days. For a moment, he considers the possibility that perhaps she’s a ghost, but it would be rather difficult to haunt someone when trapped inside a library data core.
He blinks at her.
Hallucination it is then.
Well, at least he’ll be able to see her now when he talks to her.
As if she can read his thoughts – not impossible, considering she’s in his head – River’s smile widens. “Are you going to greet your wife or just gape like a fish? It’s bad enough I had to go and rescue myself, but to get a rubbish welcome too? Maybe I should have just stayed in there after all.”
His hearts stop, his breath stutters in his throat and he stares at her with wide eyes, mouth open in disbelief. “R-river?”
She tilts her head, smirking. “No, sorry. I meant your other wife, Marilyn.”
Quite sure a hallucination of his own making would never have the impudence to snark at him like that, the Doctor scrambles to his feet and stumbles back until he bumps into River’s grave behind him. Fumbling for his sonic, he gapes at her. “Who are you?”
Her face softens. “I’m your -”
“Don’t,” he snaps, brandishing his sonic and waving it between them threateningly. “My wife is dead and I’ll never see her again, so don’t you dare -” He chokes on his own tears, the sonic shaking violently as his hand trembles. “What do you want?”
“Oh, my love,” she sighs; pursing her lips the way she always does when she doesn’t want to let him see her cry. “It’s okay. I’m here.” He holds his ground as she takes the sonic screwdriver from his limp grasp and stiffens as she steps forward, but he has nowhere to go. The heat of her body against his feels painfully real and as she reaches out a hand to his cheek, he shuts his eyes, refusing to let himself believe for even a moment that this could really be –
The warmth of her fingers is like an electric shock as she touches his cheek and all at once, he can sense vague impressions of her thoughts – overwhelming joy and the triumph of finding him, sorrow that it took her as long as it did, and open your eyes and kiss me you idiot. With a strangled gasp, his eyes fly open to find her smiling at him, that same luminous grin she always bestows on him when he’s done something especially romantic. “Hello sweetie.”
It can’t be.
With shaking hands, he reaches for her. River sways toward him and lets him feel her beneath his hands, soft and warm under his touch. He breathes her in, tears of disbelief stinging his eyes as he inhales the scent of musty books and the electricity of the vortex in her hair. She wraps her arms around him and smoothes her hands over his back, whispering, “I’m real. I’m here, sweetie. I promise.”
“It’s not possible,” he whispers, and takes her face in his hands, kissing her. He runs his tongue over her bottom lip and River opens her mouth beneath his with a soft moan, her fingers grasping at his coat as he delves inside and tastes her. His hands clutch at her face and he whimpers because she tastes like stars and dust and the air just before it rains. She tastes like River.
He pulls away with a shocked gasp, running his hands over her as tears fill his eyes. “River, how -” She presses herself as close as she can get, trailing kisses over his jaw and chin, his cheeks and his mouth. “It’s really – oh god, River.”
“Shh,” she whispers, fingers carding gently through his hair. “I’m here, my love.”
He laughs, tears streaming down his face as he picks her up and whirls her around, holding her so tightly he doubts she can even breathe, but River doesn’t seem to mind, arms around his neck as her lips brush his ear, giggling joyously. Oh, that laugh. He never thought he would hear it again but she’s here and he’s not mad at all – his wife did what he couldn’t. She saved herself.
He sets her on her feet and instantly finds her mouth with his again, his lips hungry and eager over hers. He hasn’t kissed his wife in a very long time and right now, he doesn’t intend to stop for just as long. “How?” He asks between desperate kisses. “How did you -”
River shakes her head, hands cradling his jaw. “Not now,” she whispers. “Later.”
Yes, later. He can wait for explanations later.
Now is for kissing and holding and stumbling through the graveyard toward the TARDIS without tumbling over a headstone. He cannot pull his mouth from hers long enough to navigate properly but they manage well enough, kissing hungrily and clinging to each other with grasping, greedy hands – both starved of the other for far too long. Her tongue strokes hotly against his and he curls his hands tightly around her ribcage, crushing her to him and suddenly desperate to feel her skin against his.
Her back hits the door of the TARDIS and they both sigh in relief, not even trying to make it any further. River pushes his coat from his shoulders and it drops to the ground behind him. She starts on his bowtie and he presses his shaking frame into hers, leaving kisses along her jaw and throat as he whispers against her skin, “I love you, I love you so much, River -” Her hearts thunder against his own – so very alive – and he laughs again brightly through his tears.
“I love you too, sweetie,” she says, smiling as he kisses her. “But if you ever try to -” He cuts her off with another kiss and she sighs into his mouth, the rest of her tirade momentarily forgotten as she quickly divests him of his waistcoat as well. When she starts on his bowtie, he paws at her long dress, gathering the fabric in his fists and bunching it hurriedly around her hips. Bowtie undone, River arches beneath his touch, her thighs trembling as he hooks his fingers into her knickers and yanks them down. She kicks them inside and they join his things on the grass as she winds her leg around his waist and lifts her hips with a needy moan he never thought he’d hear again.
Working quickly to undo his trousers, the Doctor almost doesn’t notice River winding her arms around his neck and frowning until she pulls the long chain out from beneath his partially unbuttoned shirt, revealing the wedding ring on the end of it. He freezes and she looks up at him with watery green eyes, tears clinging to her lashes. He offers her a tremulous smile and shrugs helplessly. “You never left me at all, honey. Not really.”
Biting back a sob, River drops the necklace to rest against his chest and yanks his head down to hers; kissing him with such force it steals the breath from his lungs. She sucks his tongue into her mouth and he groans, grasping her thigh and hiking it up around his waist, drawing her up on her tiptoes. She whimpers, reaching between them for his length, small, shaking fingers guiding him to her entrance. “Please, my love -”
One hand clutching at her hip and the other buried in her magnificent mass of curls, the Doctor keeps his eyes on his wife’s face as he pushes inside the smooth, slick heat of her body. Both of them gasp, gripping each other just a little tighter as he fills her. It’s like coming home – every bit as perfect as heaven itself and if this is his afterlife, if he has finally died at the foot of his wife’s grave of a broken heart, then he has no regrets.
River brings his mouth to hers once more and the taste of her on his tongue is enough to reassure him – this is real, she is alive and he will never ever be without her again. Their happy tears mingle but the salt on their lips only makes their kisses all the more fervent as they move together. Later, he plans to draw this out, to strip her of this pure white dress and cover every inch of her body with his mouth, to become acquainted with her all over again. And again and again.
But right now, with River’s breathy cries in his ear, the wet heat of her sex swelling around him and his own release a euphoric tickle threatening to flood him with warmth and sunlight any moment, there is no time for taking it slow. Between breathless kisses, he can say only her name, with reverent disbelief, and River strokes his face with familiar aching tenderness, whispering I’m here and I’m not leaving you.
“Never,” he promises, hips moving against hers with increasing urgency.
Breath coming in ragged pants, River rocks against his every thrust, green eyes wide and tear-filled, her cheeks flushed. She’s beautiful, glorious, alive, his. She shakes her head, her hand leaving his face to fumble between them for the chain around his neck. She clutches her wedding ring in her fist and meets his eyes, her smile breathtaking. “Not ever,” she swears.
Those words and her warmth under him and all around, her body tightening with her impending release, are more than enough to push him over the edge and with one last hard thrust, the Doctor clings to his wife, burying his face in her hair as he comes with a gasping sob. River is right there with him, one hand clutching his shoulder and the other still holding tight to her wedding ring as she shudders and shakes in his arms.
Still trembling, the Doctor kisses her softly, grinning all the while. “You’re here. Really, really here.”
She laughs, tucking him into his trousers as he sets her back on her feet and lets her dress fall back into place. “What gave it away?”
“I thought I’d never – and you –“ One day, he will finish a sentence again, but right now, kissing his wife is much more important and so far, she hasn’t offered a complaint. “Wait, you’re not going to go off and excavate something are you?” He frowns down at her, hands tightening on her hips as if she might go right this very second.
River shakes her head, smiling serenely up at him. “You still want to me to travel with you?”
He stares down at her, eyes wide and tear-filled. “Really? You and me?”
Her fingers wind around the chain lying against his chest once more as she looks up at him, smiling widely. “Time and space?”
Laughing giddily, he takes her face in his hands and kisses her forehead, her eyes and nose, the apples of her flushed cheeks. “Oh, you watch us run.”
River hums happily, tugging at the chain around his neck. “Can I have this back first?” She looks up at him hopefully. “I can actually wear it now. No more spoilers.”
Her wedding ring has been his crutch since he lost her, the thing he held onto when nothing else made sense, the thing he clutched in his darkest moments as he closed his eyes and tried to remember her smile. Now, he unclasps the chain and slides the ring off it, taking the gold band and slipping it onto River’s finger, where it belongs.
He doesn’t need it to anchor him anymore – he has her.