Pairing: River/Eleven

Rated: G

Summary: His nights have always belonged to River Song.

Notes: Title from "Seven Devils" by Florence and the Machine. Written: 10/8/13. Originally (much belatedly) posted to tumblr, and now I'm putting it here as well. I kept thinking I might expand it out, but now I think I'll leave it as is.

His nights have always belonged to River Song.

But, after Darillium, River has been getting younger with each passing night. It's what he deserves - she's already lost him as he discovered her. They've always been moving backwards in a jagged path. It's what he expected.

He hadn't let himself face how much it would hurt. Each younger version of his wife smiling up at him tears another ragged hole through him.

When it is too much to bear, when seeing her feels like losing her, he goes to Luna to seek out the Professor.

Instead, he finds the Student. And while he grins and lies and they have a lovely adventure at an archaeological dig on Zotar 7 - man-eating prehistoric centipedes aside - the Doctor can't help the cold terror that grips him. Will he never see a version of his wife who married him in every moment across time again? Is this how she felt, at the end?

It is too much. He collapses on Vastra and Jenny's sofa and then retreats to a parked TARDIS. He cannot muster the energy to save a world without his wife running alongside him in it. He's retired.

It takes the mystery of Clara to lure him back into the universe. A girl twice dead. An impossible girl. And if she is possible - so is everything else.

He ventures out at night again. River is there. The Doctor and sometimes the Student. Never the Professor. He speaks about her sometimes, tells Clara stories about the Professor before he realizes they're all in the past tense and then he quickly quiets. Anything is possible, he reminds himself in the dark moments between missing her and seeing her, and missing her while he sees her.

He is so thankful when he runs across a River old enough to remember their wedding that he gets them into ridiculous messes - too busy trying to impress her to come up with proper sacrificed-to-gods contingency plans.

They run through the nights together, hand in hand, and the Doctor lies and tells himself that it is enough.