Yowzah Oneshot Collection (2)

101(G)

Faire Confiance Au Temps Qui Passe

                        leiascully

After the Byzantium, the Doctor sulks. He's perfectly aware that he's sulking; he doesn't wish to stop. While Amy sleeps, he wanders the endless halls of the TARDIS, trailing his fingertips along the walls. The TARDIS hums, the noise of her workings an old familiar tune he whistles along with.

He thinks of River Song.

The TARDIS' purr takes on a warmer note. The lights shimmer.

"Oi," he mutters, "not you as well."

Here is what he knows about River Song: first, he will know her much, much better later. Second, she's going to give her life for him. Third, she's a confessed murderer. Fourth, she's an archaeologist. Fifth, she's a professional engima, which seems to cover all the rest of it.

He finds himself in the library. There's no whiff of her in the Gallifreyan Encyclopedia when he uncorks the bottles to waft the scent of time gone by and time yet to pass toward his face. There's no hint of her in the histories. No trickster woman with an all-too-knowing smile in the legends. No halo of curly hair on the carefully illustrated heroines in any story that ends happily ever after - but then he knows the ending of that story, has relived it a thousand times in the privacy of his memory, and it isn't as happy as he'd like. River Song, if that's even her name (a name out of a fairytale, his own voice whispers in his head) is no one. She's nowhere. And yet, the breath of her follows him everywhere; even here, the silence is like the pause before she speaks.

River. He feels he knows her well enough now to address her by first name in the privacy of his thoughts. He certainly knows her better now that he's had her asprawl on top of him; she knows him better too, he's certain, their bodies taking the measure of each other. It was a new experience for him, with her, but he suspects she could sculpt him with her eyes closed. The way she shifted against him spoke volumes; he could fill a bookshelf with the depth and breadth of her knowledge of him, taken down in cramped handwriting. Meanwhile what he knows of her (aside from the soft curve of her belly and the strength of her thighs against his and the warmth of her bosom and the scent of her perfume and the little gasp she made as her body catapulted into his, which keeps replaying in his ears until he wants to shiver) wouldn't fill a pamphlet.

He throws himself into a chair. Leather creaks under his weight.

He asked if he could trust her as they stood on the beach, handcuffs around her pale wrists. She laughed in his face, a sound more delighted than derisive. There was mischief in her eyes, and mirth, and more than a soupçon of smug pity. He wanted to gaze into her eyes until she revealed every mystery to him. He wanted to lose himself in her laugh until he discovered the handcuffs around his own wrists, and the smirk on her face even wider.

He wants to trust her and it makes him mistrust himself. He yearns to trust her, despite all her slippery answers, and to have faith in a future that includes her. To spend a span of his years with River Song - now that would be a boon granted by a benevolent universe, and he's seen too much of the dark between stars and between hearts to treasure that hope. River makes him better. River makes him sharper, quicker: it's as if he's got two minds to go along with his two hearts, because her thoughts jostle along with his own, striking sparks until the flame catches.

"I could bloody kiss you," he hears himself say, and sees again her appraising look. Not quite yet, said her eyes, and a pity. He blushed at the time, Mister Grumpy Face again - he's more than a little vexed with himself by how much he wanted her to want him to kiss her, especially as she's his future (or so he suspects). He isn't used to being the one who's rough at the edges. He isn't used to being the one who doesn't know what the future holds. And River Song looked at him and found him wanting: not ready, not finished, not the Doctor she knows. Not a man worth kissing yet, which stung more than he would have thought. But then there was the way she looked at him on the beach. Her eyes were clear and steady then, not triumphant with relief, and her voice was serious, and he wanted her to say Yes, Doctor, of course you can trust me, but no, of course, that's never what River Song would say. Despite the brevity of their acquaintance, he knows her. She will always be a mystery and a miracle. She will always be a challenge and a call to arms.