Yowzah Oneshot Collection (2)

36(M)

the universe would turn to a mighty stranger
   
       mygalfriday (BrinneyFriday)

“You said I killed you – haunt me then. The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe – I know that ghosts have wandered the earth. Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”

–      Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte

He keeps waiting for her to come back. He spent years seeing her everywhere he went, in every crowd, alone in the TARDIS, out of the corner of his eye. Her voice has been a soothing murmur in his ear, her fingers carding through his hair as he slept, both a comfort and an agony like no other. He never acknowledged her, too afraid of pouring salt into a wound that never healed. Having her near had ached, deep in his chest, but the abrupt absence of her is worse. The Doctor spends his days with his eyes wide open and his ears always pricked for the sound of her light footsteps behind him.

When the doors shut behind Clara after another adventure, the Doctor drops his chin to rest against his chest and sighs. “What now, dear?” The TARDIS is silent, as if she knows he isn’t really talking to her, that secretly, he’s hoping for a verbal reply from someone else. The control room is silent but the Doctor doesn’t move, waiting.

He hasn’t seen his wife since Trenzalore. She doesn’t mock his driving from over his shoulder; she doesn’t whisper the solution to a problem in his ear when he’s in a bind. When he swims his laps in the pool and surfaces with a gasp, she isn’t sitting by the poolside with a fond smile. When he ties his bowtie in the mirror, he no longer sees her reflection behind him and the look in her eyes that always told him she was remembering their wedding. He always pretended not to see any of these things but he cherished each and every glimpse, clung to them like some men cling to their sanity. Without River around, he can slowly feel himself losing his.

Even her ghost had been better than nothing at all.

He peeks around the TARDIS hopefully one more time, the blue lights of the control room showing him that no one is here but him. With a weary sigh, he strokes the console and flips a lever, his shoulders hunched in the echoing silence. She just left him, alone in the dark, lost and drifting without her guidance. They’d said goodbye but he hadn’t really expected it to stick. He and River always had a way of finding each other. River would never just leave him, not if she could help it.

So what’s keeping her now?

He starts to think that perhaps she hadn’t left but instead somehow found a way to make herself invisible even to him. He’d told her that seeing her hurt him and River, being the stupid, selfless, infuriating woman that she is, had simply decided to make it easier for him, never mind how much it hurt her that he couldn’t even look at her anymore. She’s still here. Of course she’s still here – she just doesn’t want him to think she is.

As the days wear on without any sign of River, the Doctor begins to plot ways to draw her out, to make her show herself. He’s found in centuries of marriage that the best way to get a reaction out of River is to make her angry and the best way to make her angry is to poke fun at one of the first decisions she ever made by herself – her love of archaeology.