Write All Night (Spoiler_Song New Year Fic): New Year
New Year
It was funny, the day he’d told her that she would be the one to kill him, she always assumed it would be a future him, one that she’d never known and never met and never loved. No, strike that. She loved them all. So maybe it was moreso that she wondered how she would do it. She had no problem with killing men. Killing beasts. Or even killing heroes.
But The Doctor was none of these things.
He was something unto himself entirely. He was something that possessed her so exclusively, she couldn’t comprehend how the strength would be in that tiny finger when the moment came and she had to look him in the eyes after all they had been through. And certainly, she had never expected that when that day did arrive, she’d be behind him, shooting him in the back, no better than a backdoor thief.
The greatest man she ever knew. A hero to many. Shot in the back, on New Year’s Eve. Born on the eve of the second millennium in America and murdered on the eve of third in Canada. She could still recall the brilliant Aurora Borealis that fled from his pours at that fateful stroke of midnight, blood in the form of the most mesmerizing of lights.
In the midst of the lights and the romping cheers of the new year, she heard screeching breaks, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away. There was a beauty in his agony that both delighted and disgusted her. Not even the feel of a familiar breath on her left ear could ease the mounting nausea.
“I’m sorry, River.”
“Like you said, this was the only way and I was the only one who could do it,” she replied stoically, refusing to look at the man behind her. She felt his hands embrace her shoulders and she longed to turn to that baby face, she knew she might run past him into the safety of the TARDIS if she turned around, so she remained firmly rooted in place. “You should go before they get here.”
“It won’t be long.”
She wanted to say something quippy, about conjugal visits and the like, but by the time she’d thought of it, she heard the searing breaks receding into the night. So she closed her eyes and waited, resigning herself to the imprisonment that he’d broken even his most sacred rule of spoilers to tell her about.