A very violent reentry - OTA - Spoilers for the 10th doctor's era

[professorsong]

"All the time we've been together, you knew I was coming here," she had said. She was right - about the library. But she was wrong, so wrong, about the Enterprise. Call it a joke of Q's. She wasn't in a laughing mood.

Professor River Song had done what she had to do. Perhaps somewhere in her mind she had always wondered if she would really do what needed to be done when it came down to it. throw herself in the way of a projectile to save him, yes. But when there was thought? When there was time for thought? She offered to give herself to save him, but hadn't she known, hadn't she always known that he wouldn't let her? That he would use the danger to her to do what he wouldn't when he had been the one at risk? She knew the Doctor. She loved the Doctor. Every form she had ever met, and the ones she only knew of as stories. She knew that to save everyone, he would give his life. Some days she didn't half wonder if he wanted to die. She didn't think she could ever love him enough to let him.

But when it was someone else taking the risk, then... ah then he would see another way clear. Another way out. Then he would come up with an impossible plan and pull it off. He did so hate to lose. So, somewhere back in the depths of her mind she wondered if she would ever have the courage not to say she was going to step between him and danger, and not to do it on instinct and emotion, but to stare death in the face and give herself to it to save him.

And now she knew. This time there was no hope for a crazy last minute plan. She knew that. And she knew he knew it. Because her journal was full. Because there was no time for another plan. For the two of them who treated space and time like a giant play yard... No. For her. For her there was no time left. So she did what she had to. She didn't say she was going to take his place, she didn't give him the chance to argue. She knocked him out, handcuffed him, and took his place. River Song worked at the controls.

But he came to too soon. He started to speak, and that... That was what he was best at. Speaking. And it was when he was speaking that he could do anything, save anyone. But not this time. She wouldn't let him, because the alternative was that he would die. And she would not let him. So she spoke. She took his death from him, and she took his trick. In the end, she learned from the Doctor in the most important ways.

The words were still on her lips. Her last words. They were meant to be her last words. "Hush now, spoilers," she had said, she still tasted the words. She closed the connection as the timer ticked down. There would be no more running. And no chance for him to stop her, to take her place. Tears fell from her eyes as the world went white.

Energy filled her, used her, passed through her. She wouldn't scream. She refused. She wouldn't do that to him. Spoilers. Her last word, the last he would hear. He carried too much pain, he hated goodbyes. But she could give him this.

But when the white faded, she wasn't dead. She felt like she should be. She wasn't in the library. She was in a hallway in a space ship she didn't know. And she was alone. No Doctor. She hadn't done it. Or rather... he had. He had saved her somehow. And he could be dead himself for it. But the pain. Oh... the pain.

She was no longer wired into the chair. She was in her space suit, hands wrapped around her journal and her sonic. She had other things with her as well, but with the pain this was all she could feel. A worn leather journal. A Sonic screwdriver. And pain.

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[professorsong]

And she was dying. With the technology they had in The Library, there would have been no way to save her. But here? The Enterprise had equipment enough to save her, she wasn't too far gone for that yet. Not that she knew any of this. She knew him. That's what she knew. She knew that he would never stop trying. And since at the moment she couldn't stop him, she would do the best she could to help him.

So she kept that smile on her face, despite the pain. She focused on the pain, held it close. Because the desire to run from the pain? She knew where that would lead, and it would only make things harder on him. And he was about to lose so much, with Donna, with.. well... everything. She reached a hand up, not just to show him she could, but because it hurt. Because as long as she felt that pain, he still had something to work with. She rested that hand on his cheek, sonic hitting her chest as she let it go.

Because he wouldn't stop trying, but if this was going to be her last moment? If he was going to fail? This would be a pretty wonderful last moment. Because for this moment she had the Doctor's full attention. And she knew that for the treasure it was.

[thelasttimelord]

He froze in place, a hand lifting, uncertain quite where at all to catch her. Her hand. Wrist. Puffy arm of that suit. The bigger problem is he had no clue. Still. None. Which was not normal for him. This expression on her face, that looked so familiarly at him. Doubtless. Faithful. Tender. He's never forgotten the whisper in his ear. It's not something that happens. Not in hundreds and thousands of years.

He wants to say it again, Who are you?
It's beating itself through every piece of him.

But he doesn't. He finds the back of her hand and part of her wrist, returning her hand to her with a pained expression of confusion, suspicion and abject uncertain that somehow gentle his earlier anger into a completely different direction. He put her hand down with an almost prolonged hold of it. Not tender himself, but almost as though if he held her hand and stared at her somehow she would make sense, start talking sense. But she didn't move, speak, do anything, and he was wasting her time now. The seconds she had.

"Hypospray," The Doctor says finally, reaching up to have access to her neck. "Won't hurt at all, and it should help with the pain."

He keeps talking, even as he goes about doing it. "Then I'm going to set up the biobed with a stasis field. See if we can't keep you with us."

[professorsong]

She let him do what he did, listened to his words, fighting to hold on simply because he was fighting. She loved the man so much, and she finally knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he would love her. Someday. And presuming she died here despite his attempts, and since her journal was full she was sure she would, he would have the memory that he had done all he could, and that so had she. She wouldn't let him live all that time thinking she had given up. On him. On them.

So she said the words that she thought he needed to hear. That they were true changed nothing. "I trust you," she said simply. She had said as much in the Library, to others about him. But now, with it being more or less just them, she said it to him, heavy with significance.

If anything would put a fire under him, this would. And when he failed, if he failed, he would always remember that he had done EVERYTHING he could have. It would, she hoped, make it easier for him to accept.

[thelasttimelord]

He nearly bristles at those words. Sometimes, from the right lips they are a promise, and a gratitude, and no matter how nicely and simply they are said, they slide between his ribs like knives. He left Rose on a beach without a real goodbye. He left Donna in her house without her real self. He could not stop Lucie from going back to where those things would happen to her again. She shouldn't trust him.

It was dangerous to trust him. Costly. Even more it aches angrily that somehow she does.

He focused on the readout screen above her head, not looking at her, or her face. The tone was enough and he was reading through the projections on her. How long she might need to be here. How long the bed might need to be used. The fact she might need surgery if things didn't pick up over the course of a few hours. Things he knew.

She was supposed to be dead. Not-Dead took a lot of effort everywhere.

When he looked back he didn't say any of those thing, though. He said, "You will have to explain that at some point."

[professorsong]

Her lips curled slightly through the pain as he told her she'll have to explain. Because there was only one thing that could be said to that. There was only one thing in the world that could be said to that really.

"....Spoilers....."

Really, you knew her almost a full day, and you expected any other answer? His own rules, after all.

[thelasttimelord]

He's starting to hate that word, along with the smile that comes with it. Like this is a game, a joke.

Like she didn't die, in that chair, because he couldn't get himself free fast enough and wasn't just hanging there staring at her dead body until he finally did get out of it with Donna's help. Like she hadn't been a bad enough, a shocking enough proof with one utterance, mystery without being another dead body on the heap.

"That won't work forever."

[professorsong]

"It doesn't have to work forever, sweetie," she said softly, almost sadly. It didn't. For her this was the last time, and even for him, it was finite. Long, but not forever. Still, 'it doesn't have' to was noncommittal enough. It was clear this was an end. He just wasn't accepting it. But he would. Eventually, he would. And he still had all that time of theirs ahead of him. All that time to love her.

And perhaps that was the nicest thing she could have done for him, to die in front of a version of him that didn't yet care about her.

But he was the Doctor. He didn't have to care... to try. Death itself was a foe.

[thelasttimelord]

Forever she didn't have. Not the way he did. No one did, and those who did, came and went. Died, or slipped away. Or had to be left behind, for other reasons. But she had time. Even if her expression meant she understood that time might not be much. Though he was uncertain because the rest of her seemed to be staying together. Impossibly, heart still beating, lungs still working, when everything said they should give up, give out.

But they didn't, and he was more than certain he had Q to blame for that, too.

"You'll have time here." This ship. This time. "It seems the snag making this place work, is working for you, too."

[professorsong]

As much as it pained her to admit this, "I don't understand," she told him, studying him, watching him. Was he giving her some sort of false hope to try and get her to hold on. She'd play along of course, for him. But she did need to know. If nothing else, she didn't want his first/last memory of her to be of her seeming stupid. That wasn't the lie she was looking to sell. Not today, not to him.

[thelasttimelord]

"Don't take it too hard. You're joining the ranks of everyone here in that."

Another mystery within a mystery, within an ongoing chess game, where the game master had all but given up appearing, without taking the ants out of the farm or the farm off the table, or kept new ones from crawling in. "You're not dying." It takes a flash bright second of pause before he realizes how dour and steel still that had sounded. "Not that that's a bad thing."

Except it is. It very much is. Humans were not supposed to live past their deaths.

"Except that you should be. Your body is stuck in a very stable state of constant near total deterioration without deteriorating."

"You should be dead already," tastes too close to You died already. It didn't take this long then. "But it's keeping you in stasis."
Not the bed. The loop around all of the ship. Q's whatever he wanted to call it. A million words strung together on a child's toy.

[professorsong]

"I should be," she agreed. "I intended to, so you could live, so you could do what you always do, Doctor, and save them all. And so help me if I am in this much pain because you chose me, over all of them, over Donna..." the threat in her voice was there, fed by the pain. Because yes, there is a treacherous part of her that wishes the Doctor would, of he were forced to choose, choose her one day over anyone else. But even if such a day ever came, she'd fight as hard as he would for him to not have to make the choice, and if he still had to...

Not this version of him. That's part of why she took the choice from him. Because he didn't know her yet, didn't love her yet, and if he sacrificed Donna... if he sacrificed even a single stranger to save her... he would have never forgiven himself.

And if she was here because he somehow made that choice... she would find a way to unmake it, to rewrite that moment of time. He might not have long left with Donna, but she wanted him to have that time, to know when they part that at least she is alive and well. Not trapped inside some computer in a library of the dead.

[thelasttimelord]

He wants to say, You did. That it hung on him like a weight.
The way everything did in those last months. Before he knew.

Just how bad it would get. How much would be gone.

His brow wrinkles, hard and confused though, while his eyes narrowed in the same, at right where her threat trails off. Sharp with pain, but heavy with an inference. Naming Donna. Who had been there, and who he had, also, lost not too long after his encounter with River. But there was something to the way she said that. Like if he'd dared.

"What about Donna?" It's harder.

Did she somehow know about the meta-crisis? About what had happened to her?
About how for a few minutes Donna was the most important person in the universe, the one who saved them all?

[professorsong]

"She's your companion. For all I know you Doctor, you just met me. "Don't you dare choose me over her, you spend the time with her you have. You'll have time with me, later. Plenty of it. It's not over for you, not us. So don't you dare sacrifice them for me, you'll still get to see me again, you still have all of that ahead of you. At the moment, Donna means more to you than I do.." she said softly, trying not to feel her heart breaking, "and at the moment, she should."

[thelasttimelord]

"She's here, too." He says, though neither his face or his tone seem convinced by River's words, or by the way she says them, reflecting toward the back, even as she would die a minute later back in the right time.. Nor anywhere near considering telling her what happens to Donna, that has already happened to him, past tense now, any more than her own future that matched his even further past. This tangled web Q wove around his timelines.

Did he actually do anything with all the stuff he brought over?

[professorsong]

Okay, now she was confused too. She didn't show it. She nodded instead. "Alright," she said. She didn't think the pain would have lasted this long, she expected to be long dead by now. She would dearly love to know what was going on, but she'd also love to not be in pain. And, well, he was ticked off at her. But that wasn't altogether atypical.