Advent story #5: For shadowturquoise

[savvyliterate]

Title: Running
Written for: shadowturquoise
Fandom/Characters: Doctor Who, Eleven/River and Amy - "reconsider"
Rating: K
Word Count: 343
Spoilers: Takes place in the time right before the Doctor returns Amy home in "Flesh and Stone."


"What are you thinking?"

Amy's words are almost a distant hum as the Doctor stared at the ocean. Waves undulated, crashing against the sand. He can still smell her, and that's quite disconcerting. Really, everything since the moment he was driven to interpret the message on the homing box was disconcerting. He hated this, being led around by a woman from his future that knew so much about him. Everything was knowing smiles and spoilers and glimpses into a future part of him wanted to scramble away from as fast as possible.

"Time can be rewritten," he told Amy, then strode toward the TARDIS.

Oh, but he was lying again. Rule 1. If he rewrote time, then it put Donna and the 4,000 people in the Library at risk. He would fail them because he was so selfish, so scared, he admitted to himself, of growing close to River Song that he would reconsider whatever time he had with her. He didn't like being led around by the nose, and that's exactly what she and the fates were doing. Yet, he couldn't rewrite time, not like that.

And what got under his skin more than having his future essentially laid out before him was the fact that he honestly liked River Song. She was brilliant. She could think on the same level as he could, she got the bloody teleport working and saved Amy when he couldn't, he didn't have to explain things to her like he did to everyone else. She wasn't scared of danger, seemed to like it as much as he did. There were so many things that felt right about her that it shook him to the very core, and he didn't like feeling so vulnerable -- especially regarding someone he barely knew.

"You're running from River," Amy said a few minutes later when they were in the TARDIS. "I'm running too."

He wasn't running, he rationalized. He was compartmentalizing. Completely different. But the Doctor hastily tucked River Song into a corner of his mind, knowing that he would be re-examining the issue, and her, sooner than he'd realize.

Other days in the advent calendar
Dec. 1: A Moth Drawn to Flame - Doctor Who, Tenth Doctor and River Song (for irony_rocks)
Dec. 2: Profits - Ranma 1/2, Kuno/Nabiki (for rose)
Dec. 3: Bite, Break, Suck and Crunch - Doctor Who, Eleven/River (for gidget_zb)
Dec. 4: Not for Burning - Slayers, Lina/Gourry (for pharoah999)

Comments

[hihoplastic.livejournal.com]

He was SO thinking about River when he said that. I love this look at how he feels about the whole situation early on; it's perfect.

[shadowturquoise.livejournal.com]

Oooh! Thank you! Great introspection for Eleven. It's obvious in that 2-parter that he is running scared of River and fascinated all at the same time. The is a very realistic look at what he was probably musing over at the end.