[holo] - Not so much helping, are we.

[who_never_would]

The Doctor perches his tablet on the edge of the TARDIS' console, staring bleakly down at the information gathered for him by Ianto. He'd run the data through his head at least  ten dozen times, run it through the TARDIS' computer, and then, just for good measure, had run it through every single piece of stinkingly obsolete technology he had

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[songofspoilers]

The vwoorp vwoorping gives her enough time to splash her face with cold water thankfully, and shake this stupid emotional outburst she's allowed herself. Not to mention disguise the fact she'd been crying, even though he would probably be able to tell, if he bothered looking, that is.

Things were getting too much for River and she didn't want to admit it even to herself. She'd spent a year living a life that wasn't even real, a choice that she'd made and he took away from her because he refuses to accept that people die. Then she'd found herself here and learned that he'd never returned after that argument a few months back, at least not on his timeline. And to top it all, she has no idea if she's dead, alive or what and she's been faced with avoidance from him, then denial and now anger.

Well, anger she can do. Boy can she do anger, infact anger suits her just fine.

By the time he calls out, from her office of all places. The one untidy room in the place, which she knows sets him on edge at the best of times, not to mention the tablet lying discarded in the corner of the room having smashed the urn it had been hurled at. She yells back from the mezzanine upper floor landing, voice echoing in the huge open space.

"So I see. Ever think of trying the door, like normal people?! Or should I say, like stinking apes?" She snaps. "At least then I could ignore it!"

[who_never_would]

The Doctor shudders at the state of River's office, making sure he doesn't break anything as he storms out to follow the sound of her voice. This is an argument that's taken place before, shouted across the house - flickers of that memory flash into head for a second, and he struggles to clear them away. He knows where she's standing, just by virtue of his sensitive hearing, and from the acoustics of her home. "No," he shouts back, "I am not normal people, and I am not a stupid. Stinking. Ape!" He slams the door to River's office so he doesn't have to look back at the mess. The rest of her home is fine. Most of the time, at least. He hopes it is today, because blimey, he doesn't have any of the resilience he used to against that sort of visual chaos. "And you will not ignore me!" he bellows, taking the stairs two at a time to come face to face with River on the upper floor landing. He manages not to trip up the stairs, or fall back down them for that matter, which he has a tendency to do when he's in a hurry.

... he hasn't been in this house for so long. His hand hits the banister. More flickers. More images. Frustrated shouting from one floor to the next. Quiet talks by the indoor reflecting pool. A pillow fight that started with mad, hysterical laughter inside the TARDIS and ended on an entirely too foreign planet - and how they'd just hardly escaped their own curiosity with their lives that afternoon.

When comes to a halt, he just sort of... falters, staring at River. What the Doctor lacks in cheerfulness, in child-like fascination and sweetness at this point, he's made up for in being a little less clueless. She only hangs up on him when she doesn't want to deal with him because he's upset her in some way, fashion or form. He seems to be blastedly good at it.

He swallows, throat knotting painfully.

"You're right." Then, regaining a little bit of his bluster, he turns on his heel and slides down the banister, landing in the main room. A few long steps bring her to her front door. He flings it open, stands on the other side of the threshold, and closes it with a bang. A few seconds later he knocks on it, finds that the automatic lock has engaged, points his sonic screwdriver at it, pops the lock back open, re-opens the door and shouts, "No one hangs up on me, Professor River Song, especially not you!"

[songofspoilers]

Once he's leapt his way up the stairs, her jaw is set so firmly and her lips smashed together so tightly in a melange of fury and resolute intent not to show even the slightest hint of weakness, she's a little taken aback by his pause and she swallows in return, almost mimicking his action.

She wasn't expecting him to concede to her point so readily and it leaves her speechless momentarily, a stinging in her eyes that she somehow manages to dissolve by sheer willpower alone and a concerted effort not to blink.

And then he proves to her exactly why she wasn't expecting it, because it was all just to prove a point.

"The idea of the door, is a concept developed centuries ago, used as a way of keeping uninvited guests out. I probably have a book on it somewhere if you'd like to gen up on it, it's a basic social skill you might find useful." She bites back.

"And actually. Yes. I do. If I want to!"

[who_never_would]

Clambering back up the stairs, the Doctor catches one of his feet on the underside of one of the steps, nearly falls flat on his face - manages not to, and then returns to the landing, standing with his hands in his pockets. His dark eyes drop to his black Converses, his white dress-shirt in mild disarray from all the movement. He lacks his suit-coat at the moment.

"I'm uninvited now, am I? Unwelcome?" He takes a step closer. "Well, Professor Song," oh, how strange and bitter that title feels on his tongue. He reaches over to a nearby shelf, pulls off a newer edition of a rather hefty book and offers it to her. "Maybe it's this one. The answers, I mean. Maybe this one has all the answers to the questions everyone has about this blasted place that I don't. What about the ones cluttering that damnable office of yours? Do they have the clues to the riddles, the right variable to plug in to make the numbers all suddenly fall into place?" He's only about a foot from her now, standing easily in abuse-range.

There is no point to prove now. The Doctor lets the book drop back onto the bookshelf should River decide not to take it, and just stands, weight evenly distributed on both feet.

"Fine," he says, softly, the words barely resounding on the flat planes of the house. "I get it." His eyes dart up to meet hers. "Ignore me. Do whatever you want. Hang up on me. Run off again, hide that office, write books about the genocide I committed to save the rest of the universe, write about how I abandoned you, tell the whole bloody universe, I don't care."

The Doctor closes his eyes, tears spilling openly down his cheeks. He's never been so good at the willpower thing.

"I never had the right-..." he pauses, checks himself as his breathing picks up, as his voice breaks. "... but you know, I never imagined it would come to this. Between you, and I. You have to love someone before you can hate them I suppose, but I really don't think I can ever hate you, and... shame on me for trying to tear you away from your life, from your work, and all the things that mattered to you, everything you did with everything that you were-..."

The Doctor lifts his chin a little, chokes a fond smile at her as he rambles on, "I never thought you'd stay with me. I just hoped you would. Guess... I was wrong. Not a new thing. Been wrong before. Will probably be wrong again. ... I'll use the door next time. Sorry to ah, barge in. I'll just be on my way."

[songofspoilers]

"That's not..." true, she was going to say, and she actually shuts up as he continues. Him standing before her, looking like he needs her more then he ever did before as she semi guides the book back to the shelf with him, neither taking it nor refusing it. Her hand touches his, resting on top of of his fingers for a second, a subtle offer of comfort before she withdraws just as tentatively.

She tries to keep the eye contact as his eyes dart up to meet hers, but she can't keep that intimacy and not cry herself. So she looks away with a tight blink, in an attempt not to break down herself in response.

The rest, she just listens to. Not able to look at him. She's facing him, but her head's turned to the side, giving him her profile and she picks a spot off in the distance to focus on, despite the fact her gaze keeps getting drawn back fleetingly. An ever increasing fear that this is really it, the end, makes her heart feel like it was literally stabbed.

It wasn't the end when she died, it wasn't the end when he ran and never returned. But it's now, on an alien planet. It's quite fitting, when she thinks about it. A lifetime of exploring the unknown with him, it's only apt it would end that way too.

Her jaw tightens again, the slightest quiver of the tendons in her neck betraying her true feelings and the resolve she's exercising not to reach out and show him how she really feels.

When he's finished, she still hasn't uttered a word, and it's not until he's half way back down the stairs, that she speaks. Her words are quiet and thick with emotion. For all their softness though, they cut through the silence with a piercing resonance.

"Don't..." A single tear escapes and rolls over her cheekbone, which she eagerly brushes away with her fingertips, pulling at her tear duct with her middle finger to prevent any more.

[who_never_would]

Long fingers grip the banister tightly as the Doctor stops in his tracks, staring at the front door with cold eyes. "Why?" and his own voice cracks, becoming half-whisper and half snarl. Cold rage rises up in his chest, and he's back up the stairs and shouting five inches from River's face before he can really pause to think. "Why?" his hands dart out with that inhuman quickness to grab at her shoulders. "So you can keep on shouting at me when there's no one else to shout at? So you can seal yourself up in this house and ignore me when it's emotionally inconvenient for you to engage? Marriage isn't about who wins, River, it's not about winning or losing or proving a point! It's about loving someone so much that you can't imagine a world without them, and-"

He does not bother to brush away the tears off of his cheeks. He looks down at his shoes, and then back up at her, any sign of his outburst save reddened eyes and the tracks of tears across his high cheekbones gone.

"Don't what, River?" he whispers, leaning in closer so that his lips almost brush her ear. He smiles a smile that does not reach his eyes. "Don't leave you alone? Don't leave you like this? Don't walk out on you?"

[songofspoilers]

"Don't even think about calling me on that," she says coldly, disconnecting herself as much as she can, but it's hard when he's so close and he feels so real. The first real thing she's felt since the Library, his hands are grabbing her shoulders forcefully, but they're solid hands, hands she never thought she'd feel again. It reminds her of being pinched to prove something isn't a dream, a rude awakening -- this is real and she's alive, and they're the first hands she would have hoped for, even in their anger.

"I'm not the one that left forever to avoid this. I might immerse myself in my work, but I've always been there for you. Always a shoulder to cry on, always there to listen and not pass judgement."

"And, you're right," River says, defeated. "It's not about that, it's about loving a person so much, that you'd give them anything. Not this constant battle for my independence."

"Or is that why it always was, is that why you never gave up? I get it now," she takes a deep breath shaky breath, it's all slotting into place, at least the way she's figured it.

"You wanted to take my whole life away from me, everything that made me River Song. My career. Without that I'd have never been at the Library, would I? Is that why you stayed, always came back? Always hoped you might win."

She closes her eyes as he whispers, so close, too intimate. "You don't need to now, I guess you never needed me after all. I died. It's over. You're free to go."

[who_never_would]

Mouth agape, he withdraws, shock horribly apparent in his eyes. And when she tells him that he's free to go, that's when the Doctor's grip goes from forceful to desperate, dropping from her shoulders just long enough to wrap his skinny arms around her. He presses his nose into the crook of her neck and outright sobs into her collarbone, the entirety of his thin frame shaking. It's like he shrinks, suddenly fragile and small, collapsing in on himself bit by bit. The control he had, his own emotional distance, all of that disintegrates as he clings to her, ancient rage, bitterness all defeated by the simple gesture of touch. Breath ragged in his throat, he digs his fingers into the fabric at her back, hardly able to speak.

"That's not why I came back. That's never why I came back, River, and you know it. You want to think I'm a coward who wanted nothing more than to take your life away from you, to strip you of everything that made you who you are, y-... your logic doesn't work. Why would I want to be with you if you weren't you, I fell in love with you, not some twisted version of how you thought I wanted you to be, you don't understand, this isn't -... I'm a coward, River. A coward who needs the better part of himself. A coward who made a bet, lost, and despite everything, despite everything is glad he lost. I didn't come back hoping I'd win. It wasn't about winning."

You are not dead!" Then, he just stops, clings to her more tightly than before. "You're not dead, River, you are not dead, you're wrong, you're not-"

It's like something in the Doctor breaks there, right in front of her, as he repeats that phrase, over and over again. A few seconds later it's like he's trying to explain something to her with the urgency only brought about by grief, by sheer terror, and the more he tries, the less coherent he gets. The combination of tears and speaking is a bad one, and the Doctor doesn't seem to do too well with it. Finally, he just gives up.

[songofspoilers]

There are no words to be said, no counter arguments. Not now anyway. River wraps her arms around him and lets him cry, holds him close to her, his familiar form shaking in her arms and the warmth of his fresh tears on her skin. Gently she shushes him, fingers threading into his hair at the nape of his neck, "It's okay, I know, and you're not," she shushes him again, cradling his head and a hand rubbing at his back reassuringly.

"I'm not dead, I'm here." She kisses his head gently, grateful that her own tears are falling out of view. River simply holds him there, soft words to calm him repeated over and over, waiting for his breathing to become less ragged, and silently thanking 'Taxon' for bringing her back. They'd work this out, she'd help him, like she has countless times before, only this time maybe she'd let him help her in return.