In the Neighborhood
River/Rose, Doctor/Rose, implied Doctor/River
Rose is sitting, legs curled beneath her, when she feels a hand in her hair (longer now, longer than it's been in years) and a smile against her cheek.
"What are you doing here?" she whispers, knowing those lips and those hands and this presence all too well for her liking.
"I was in the neighborhood."
A cloud rolls overhead. They're in a field.
"That's a bit unlikely, River."
A twinkling laugh in her ear, and then-- "Oh, but Rose Tyler, you know better than me how the subconscious all but transcends dimension."
She picks at the grass by her bare feet. "So you're... sleeping too, then."
"That's my clever girl."
"Is he..."
"No," and there's an almost melancholy shift in the breeze. "He doesn't stay through the night."
"Ah."
Rose tries again, because surely River Song has better things of which to dream than a blond girl living a universe away. "Why are you here?"
Strong hands tug her cornflower curls back (it's something in the air, the Doctor says, that makes her hair so... wild) so honey eyes have no choice but to gaze into green.
"Am I not allowed to visit an old friend?" the other woman asks with quirked lips. "Or are we no longer friends now, is friendship something that does not transcend dimension?" There's nothing unfriendly in her tone; Rose almost wishes there were.
"You knew."
And the penny drops before Rose can even tell her control is slipping. River sighs.
"Yes."
"And you still let me hope."
"I know."
She sits up quickly. "No, how can you? How can you know just how angry I am, how betrayed I feel?" River's quiet. "All that time, we got so close... an' you must have been havin' a good laugh, 'here's this silly blond who thinks she's gonna stay with him forever, who thinks she's something special.'
"An' the worst thing is, I let you distract me from the mission. I had universes to save, an' I was runnin' around with the Doctor's lover, thinkin' how I'd missed the runnin' and how I'd loved the runnin' and how I'd rocket myself through hell, again an' again, just to feel that rush."
Rose wants to run, to leave behind her not-lover from an old world, but in this dream her legs are all but melded to the grass. And so when she feels a hand slide into hers, she grips it oh, so tightly.
"I was fallin' for you, even as I was searchin' for the love of my life, an' you never told me. I know, I know," she adds when River gives her a look. "All of time and space could have imploded had you told me." A smooth caramel finger glides over her knuckle.
A bird trills in a nearby tree. Two bees mate.
"But that doesn't mean it didn't hurt," the other woman finishes as she reaches up a hand toward Rose's face and tucks an errant gold lock away. "I'm here because I'm sorry."
Rose doesn't regret the choice she made on a beach two years ago, and she doesn't regret loving her Doctor and letting the other go, not for one second. But there was never any closure, and that hurts.
A tear slips down a porcelain cheek and River wipes it away. "I wanted to tell you, before I go to the Library, because I don't know... I'm getting signs," she started, and for the first time in this strange dream Rose knew what this was. "I was there, at the Verran marketplace, that day you bought the bezoolium. I could have told you then, to stay away from Canary Wharf, to hold on to that lever for just another heartbeat, but... I'll admit, I am a bit selfish."
Rose smiles. "Pot, meet kettle." There's a moment in which the words of the man sleeping beside her worry at her seams. She died to ensure my future, her past. If I had died for her then, she would have never met me, and for some reason that was an unacceptable outcome.
Unacceptable.
"Make sure you bring the handcuffs," she whispers as she gently presses her lips to River's. "You know how the Doctor is. And... thank you."
The older woman contemplates her for a moment before winking. "I suppose you're not gonna give me any spoilers then, right?"
Her heart breaks a little. "Oh, absolutely not."
She wakes up tucked in her Doctor's arms and cries.