fic: The Haunted Man
Title: The Haunted Man
Author lonewytch
Rating: General
Characters & Pairing: River/11
Wordcount: 1269
Summary:There are more things that make it all worthwhile than River can count
A/N: Written for the 11th Doctor ficathon on who_at_50. Title and lyrics from the Bat For Lashes song.
Where once we kissed and ran, the memory scorched the man
I have to tell you dear, death has become my breathing.
Still, I'm holding out my hand, standing by my haunted man.
Yes, your ghosts have got me too
But it's me and you, and I can't run.
Bat for Lashes
There are more things that make it all worthwhile than River can count.
The curve of space and the swirl of galaxies, so elegant, so vast and complicated.
That blue box, with a heart so hot and bright that it burned its way into her forever when she first stepped inside it in the body she possesses now. The realisation, when that happened, that the ship’s light had been wound all through the dreams of her childhood, and that she had never really been alone - even through those long and lonely early years.
There’s the beating heart of pulsars, there’s the feel of a quasar’s energy trying to push through the shell of the Tardis.
There’s the mysteries inside her head, her Timelord DNA lending her insight, intuition, and an understanding for subtle physics. He teaches her all about these things and never holds anything back, never keeping as a secret the forgotten languages of his people and their obscure circling mathematics. He gives it all to her.
Himself. That’s best of all. He gives her both his light and his dark, and she holds both of them in her hands carefully.
She loves and is loved. It’s fierce and mad and dangerous, it feels a little bit like she’s falling - half terrifying, half exhilarating. She never wants it to stop.
He gives her all of these things and more. She asked once, in a life that feels like it was a million years ago, if he was worth it. She knows now that he is.
*
Her confinement isn’t exactly unpleasant. It is her choice to remain here in this tower clasped by purple storms and whipped by endless rain. It’s her choice not to break free and then run, run, run away and never come back; her choice to keep up the pretence and masquerade. This fact is important. For River, every time she chooses something for herself she takes one step further away from the rippling blue of that silent lake, glimpsed through the sheen of a visor.
People have done crazier things for love than stay in prison, she is sure. She’s done some crazier things herself in fact. Breaking a fixed point in time numbers highly on the list.
But that part of it will never go down in the history books in the way his death will. It will never be anybody’s myth, anybody’s folklore. The secret otherworld of disintegrating time, the place of always-never-forever, is held only in the heads of a few and there it will remain, never to be spoken. Who would believe any of them anyway?
No, she won’t be painted as the fool who loved too much - the woman who would let the Universe go to wrack and ruin for the sake of a man.
Instead she’ll be the murderess, the femme fatale. It’s a role she rather likes, and she plays her part well.
*
For the small amount of time she actually spends behind the dull grey bars (and let’s be honest, it’s not really a confinement when you can just pick the lock, is it?) she comforts herself with reading her blue diary. It becomes her book of fairytales, and she feels strangely childlike as she sits cross legged on her thin prison bed reading it. It becomes a tale that she lives, writes and then reads, the looping of her hand sprawling across the pages as she fills in her part of the story.
It’s her own personal myth, and as such it is a map. It’s a way into her past, it marks the territory, draws the lines of memory. The slap of the rain against the walls, the groan of the storms and the hard flash of lightning accompany the flick of pages as she journeys back through the things they have done together.
*
There’s always dark and light, light and dark, it is ever the way with the pair of them. Nothing is straightforward, there are curves, twists and turns, unexpected journeys into bright shadows and dark suns. There are small disasters; there’s blood, smoke, bones. But there’s also laughter and joy too. Nobody told her life would be easy, and she never wanted it to be.
Sometimes when it’s dark she thinks about the things that can haunt a person. Both of them have lived such complicated lives that ghosts trail after them and sink into the imprints their footsteps leave. Occasionally the ghosts catch up with and settle around them, their touch cold, their fingers damp like tears.
She watches the way his eyes sometimes go far away. These are the times when he is seeing orange skies and silver leaves, when he sees those he has loved, their faces pinpricks of light in the dark. These are the times when he sees blood on his hands and she knows it must burn like the heart of a star.
For her, there’s the taste of the Judas tree on her lips, there’s a gun aimed towards his hearts, flashing green and then green again. In her nightmares, he is not a Doctor in a Doctor’s suit...he is just The Doctor. She stops his hearts and watches him fall and die before she returns into the blue of Silencio.
*
It is best when they are almost on the same page, when the pages of their diaries match each other and she can travel with him for a little while. But sometimes, she accidentally steps into his past, or he into her future - and he is young and all unaware of her. He flusters easily, blushes and flirts with her furiously.
She watches this younger man with amusement and a pang of loss, but just loves him all the more fiercely.
*
She is as good as mortal now; you would think that she would manage this life carefully, protect this body and keep it safe from danger. But no. Amy and the Doctor both berate her for the way she seems to seek out the most difficult and dangerous circumstances. For the way she seems to place herself uncannily at the very centre of such situations. She has an eye for being at the centre of the storm and for harnessing the winds in her hands. She is made of water; she can hold the rain. She is alive…and so she lives.
She knows she isn’t forever though. She’s not that stupid. They could have had years together, lifetimes, but she does not honestly believe there was another way. And what would those lifetimes have meant anyway, had she chosen them? Her own parents hating her for killing the man she didn’t know she would have loved… the ghost of the Silence forever dwelling inside her, breaking all her bones from within.
*
In the end, loving an immortal who sometimes has the brain of a child is both rewarding and frustrating. There are days when she could punch him. He’s unpredictable, mercurial. He knows it all, yet looks at the Universe through the eyes of a child seeing it for the very first time. It’s spectacular. It drives her mad. It drives her to distraction. It’s what the word love was actually made for. It’s what they were both made for.
Bone and blood and skin, they are made for each other, made for pressing themselves against the skin of the universe over and over. Stars, neutrinos, black holes. Strange civilisations. Danger and triumph. The inevitable snapping at their heels of everything that haunts them both.
It doesn’t matter. They can outrun it all.
Author lonewytch
Rating: General
Characters & Pairing: River/11
Wordcount: 1269
Summary:There are more things that make it all worthwhile than River can count
A/N: Written for the 11th Doctor ficathon on who_at_50. Title and lyrics from the Bat For Lashes song.
Where once we kissed and ran, the memory scorched the man
I have to tell you dear, death has become my breathing.
Still, I'm holding out my hand, standing by my haunted man.
Yes, your ghosts have got me too
But it's me and you, and I can't run.
Bat for Lashes
There are more things that make it all worthwhile than River can count.
The curve of space and the swirl of galaxies, so elegant, so vast and complicated.
That blue box, with a heart so hot and bright that it burned its way into her forever when she first stepped inside it in the body she possesses now. The realisation, when that happened, that the ship’s light had been wound all through the dreams of her childhood, and that she had never really been alone - even through those long and lonely early years.
There’s the beating heart of pulsars, there’s the feel of a quasar’s energy trying to push through the shell of the Tardis.
There’s the mysteries inside her head, her Timelord DNA lending her insight, intuition, and an understanding for subtle physics. He teaches her all about these things and never holds anything back, never keeping as a secret the forgotten languages of his people and their obscure circling mathematics. He gives it all to her.
Himself. That’s best of all. He gives her both his light and his dark, and she holds both of them in her hands carefully.
She loves and is loved. It’s fierce and mad and dangerous, it feels a little bit like she’s falling - half terrifying, half exhilarating. She never wants it to stop.
He gives her all of these things and more. She asked once, in a life that feels like it was a million years ago, if he was worth it. She knows now that he is.
*
Her confinement isn’t exactly unpleasant. It is her choice to remain here in this tower clasped by purple storms and whipped by endless rain. It’s her choice not to break free and then run, run, run away and never come back; her choice to keep up the pretence and masquerade. This fact is important. For River, every time she chooses something for herself she takes one step further away from the rippling blue of that silent lake, glimpsed through the sheen of a visor.
People have done crazier things for love than stay in prison, she is sure. She’s done some crazier things herself in fact. Breaking a fixed point in time numbers highly on the list.
But that part of it will never go down in the history books in the way his death will. It will never be anybody’s myth, anybody’s folklore. The secret otherworld of disintegrating time, the place of always-never-forever, is held only in the heads of a few and there it will remain, never to be spoken. Who would believe any of them anyway?
No, she won’t be painted as the fool who loved too much - the woman who would let the Universe go to wrack and ruin for the sake of a man.
Instead she’ll be the murderess, the femme fatale. It’s a role she rather likes, and she plays her part well.
*
For the small amount of time she actually spends behind the dull grey bars (and let’s be honest, it’s not really a confinement when you can just pick the lock, is it?) she comforts herself with reading her blue diary. It becomes her book of fairytales, and she feels strangely childlike as she sits cross legged on her thin prison bed reading it. It becomes a tale that she lives, writes and then reads, the looping of her hand sprawling across the pages as she fills in her part of the story.
It’s her own personal myth, and as such it is a map. It’s a way into her past, it marks the territory, draws the lines of memory. The slap of the rain against the walls, the groan of the storms and the hard flash of lightning accompany the flick of pages as she journeys back through the things they have done together.
*
There’s always dark and light, light and dark, it is ever the way with the pair of them. Nothing is straightforward, there are curves, twists and turns, unexpected journeys into bright shadows and dark suns. There are small disasters; there’s blood, smoke, bones. But there’s also laughter and joy too. Nobody told her life would be easy, and she never wanted it to be.
Sometimes when it’s dark she thinks about the things that can haunt a person. Both of them have lived such complicated lives that ghosts trail after them and sink into the imprints their footsteps leave. Occasionally the ghosts catch up with and settle around them, their touch cold, their fingers damp like tears.
She watches the way his eyes sometimes go far away. These are the times when he is seeing orange skies and silver leaves, when he sees those he has loved, their faces pinpricks of light in the dark. These are the times when he sees blood on his hands and she knows it must burn like the heart of a star.
For her, there’s the taste of the Judas tree on her lips, there’s a gun aimed towards his hearts, flashing green and then green again. In her nightmares, he is not a Doctor in a Doctor’s suit...he is just The Doctor. She stops his hearts and watches him fall and die before she returns into the blue of Silencio.
*
It is best when they are almost on the same page, when the pages of their diaries match each other and she can travel with him for a little while. But sometimes, she accidentally steps into his past, or he into her future - and he is young and all unaware of her. He flusters easily, blushes and flirts with her furiously.
She watches this younger man with amusement and a pang of loss, but just loves him all the more fiercely.
*
She is as good as mortal now; you would think that she would manage this life carefully, protect this body and keep it safe from danger. But no. Amy and the Doctor both berate her for the way she seems to seek out the most difficult and dangerous circumstances. For the way she seems to place herself uncannily at the very centre of such situations. She has an eye for being at the centre of the storm and for harnessing the winds in her hands. She is made of water; she can hold the rain. She is alive…and so she lives.
She knows she isn’t forever though. She’s not that stupid. They could have had years together, lifetimes, but she does not honestly believe there was another way. And what would those lifetimes have meant anyway, had she chosen them? Her own parents hating her for killing the man she didn’t know she would have loved… the ghost of the Silence forever dwelling inside her, breaking all her bones from within.
*
In the end, loving an immortal who sometimes has the brain of a child is both rewarding and frustrating. There are days when she could punch him. He’s unpredictable, mercurial. He knows it all, yet looks at the Universe through the eyes of a child seeing it for the very first time. It’s spectacular. It drives her mad. It drives her to distraction. It’s what the word love was actually made for. It’s what they were both made for.
Bone and blood and skin, they are made for each other, made for pressing themselves against the skin of the universe over and over. Stars, neutrinos, black holes. Strange civilisations. Danger and triumph. The inevitable snapping at their heels of everything that haunts them both.
It doesn’t matter. They can outrun it all.