You've reached River. I assume you know what to do, if not-- speak and you shall be heard.

Unless I don't feel like answering.

*beep*

Quote: There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered. - Nelson Mandela

( NonLinear )

Muse: River Song
Word count: 2377

91.2 - List - People you've counted as friends at some point during your life

Raine - does my younger sister count?
Aunt Nonny - not actually an Aunt
Joseph and Jason Toya - we got each other through medieval earth history
The Doctor
John Hart - until I hated him
Thomas Culpepper - the man had the worst taste in females
Martha Jones - lovely wedding
John Hart - what can I say I'm a glutton for punishment
The Doctor - again, and.. its complicated
Dave - a doll
Other Dave - told the worst jokes
Anita - braver than I
The Doctor - again, though not quite
Donna - or I like to think we would have been

Muse: River Song
Word Count: 105
Rating: PG

Lyrics: MGMT - Time to Pretend

The first time he showed up on her doorstep rain soaked and lost, she couldn’t send him away though she had good reason to. Instead she'd stepped back and let him in, taken his coat dripping water on her floor and imagined it was the tears she could hear choking his voice.

He called out another name when he came, she pretended not to hear; she knew how he felt about the other man, but she convinced herself that it didn't matter because the name on her lips, unspoken but hovering there had belonged to someone else. In the heat of passion, sometimes people said things they didn't mean too.

The second time, nearly fifteen years later, she opened her door and he was there with no warning; older but with the same lost expression in his bright blue eyes. His love, if not the man himself, was dead; they drank to the loss without mentioning Jack's name and didn’t kiss while they made love. River was resigned to the fact that she'd never have John's heart but couldn't get over the shock that hearing her name name on his lips evoked. She believed love was enough to conquer all even if she knew this wasn't love, didn't have the heart to correct him when he told her otherwise.

The last time, when she was mourning him again, she'd gasped wordlessly into John's skin wetting his face with her silent tears. It occurred to her that she wouldn't be doing this if she wasn't drunk and lost and trying to find a way to feel anything other than what she felt. Even when she'd imagined going to bed with John again -- as she often had he was quite good -- it hadn't had the frantic need to act that this had. She panted into his ear as he slid between her thighs; her hips rocked against his, pressing more of her pale icy skin against his own. When she came, she barely made a sound.

When she died he stood there a construct of C.A.L's, the real man out there somewhere but the memory of him enough to bring him to life within the mainframe.

She’d never much believed in life being lyrical, but there was something poetic about the way things had turned out.

Muse: River Song
Word Count: 386
Rating: R

Quote: True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked. - Erich Segal

His voice is whimpering. I've never seen so much need in him. I can't even see anything anymore; all I am is sex. It's kind of funny though, to be master of someone who owns you already, who you know so intimately that their very smell is like a stamp on you. We're alike, he told me that when he showed up, no baggage, looking so very young. We’re alike and I know it's true as work rough fingers trace over my flesh dancing in infinite circles my emotions shattering as my body winds tighter beneath his.

I'm drowning in the pillows, in the soft down of the bed beneath me, and the hard pounding of his body above me and I know in that instant that I don't love him. I want to, and I think he wants to love me but all we've managed is passion - not love.

He wants me as much as I want him, the tight grip on my hands and the lips residing at the base of my throat tell me that. The way he fills me from the soul out, has learned me so completely that every sigh is like a shout, he is as much master as I am. As much slave to this cycle we are caught in. I tighten my grip on his back laving the tanned, glistening skin of his throat with my tongue wishing I could mark him. But I don't. He isn’t mine to mark and I am not his.

We're the same. I repeat it like a mantra. We are one; desperately holding onto each other in a frantic attempt to feel something. It isn't love. I know that now. It isn't even about love, or lust or want. It's about fear; a fear of being alone, a fear that there isn't something else out there for us anymore; something more than heat and sweat and touch. It's a fear of letting go what there is for what could be and being hurt by it. We turn and he lifts me bringing his mouth to my breast and I bow against him forcing him closer, pulling him into my body as though we could disappear into each other.

I cry out something, anything other than his name - in that moment it is the name I can't ever say and I am fighting to hang onto myself in the riptide of emotions that wash over me. I break the surface, gasping for air, shaking in my skin wrapping myself in him as he breathes heavily against my neck slipping from my body without ceremony. I can see it in his eyes when I look at him, he doesn't love me any more than I love him and he knows it now too.

The same but separate when all we wanted was to be a part of something bigger and the freedom is like a splash of cold water on my skin.

I can taste another mans name on my lips; it bursts like honey on the tongue as I swallow it still unspoken. He covers my mouth with his almost hopelessly; in a tender gesture I barely recognize and pauses, his temple resting against mine.

I forced myself to want more than his passion, wished for this tender moment in his arms every time we were together and now I am paying for it as shame burns a fire hot path over my skin. I failed him, we failed each other. I can no longer be his escape and as fervently as I wish it he cannot be mine - our run as glorious as it has been will never be the same.

"I'm sorry." I mumble it against his lips my hands wandering over the muscled expanse of his back. "Sorry." I'd never admitted it to him, to myself and I'm shaken by the realization that I've been using him as much as I've always known he was using me.

"We're alike, remember love." Our eyes meet and the truth of it chases through me leaving me shaken.

I wanted him to make me forget every name but his, I wanted to look up in my dreams and see his face and feel love. But when I open my eyes and find his I see nothing in his face that makes me love him.

I see myself and wish eternity was looking back at me.

ooc: His name, in case you were wondering is John Hart. Fic inspired by River's relationship both fake handwavey backstory and in game with John Hart at Heart's and Minds.


Muse: River Song
Word Count: 741

Prompt: Five things you regret and one you don't.

( 1. Words That Can’t Be Unsaid )

( 2. Something that Should Have Been Special (R Rated) )

( 3. The Adventure You Didn’t Take )

( 4. The Thoughtless Thing You Said )

( 5. The Mistake You Should Regret More Than You Do )

( 6. The Man Who Changed Your Life )

River Song
Doctor Who
Word Count: 1525

A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short - Bertrand Russell

( Spoilers )

River Song
Doctor Who
Word Count: 100

"Oh," she was leaning against one of the shelves, finger to her lips as she thought about it. She could have been standing there in a business suit for all the notice she seemed to take of her nudity.

"There's not much else to see I'm afraid."

( Title: The Shape of Riven Wood )

Muse: River Song
Word count: 263

( Cut for Length/Spoilers )

She came back to awareness kneeling in damp grass, a breeze on her
face cooling skin that felt chapped and burnt. She saw spots when she
opened her eyes. Spots that danced and darkened and merged into
shapes. Trees. A lake.

She started to laugh.

"Impossible man!"

[ooc: Welcome River Song, she arrives from the end of the Doctor Who episode Forest of the Dead.]

She called them artifacts. He called them junk, and didn't mean it. Why keep them if they meant nothing she'd reasoned and for once he hadn't had an answer. Each little tidbit she found stashed around the TARDIS elicited a story, some funny, some frightening, some heartbreaking. Chapters in a tale she increasingly wanted a part in.

So she left things.

( And he returned them. )


Muse: River Song
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 901

'I should have gone with him.'

It's all I can think of as I kneel hip deep in the viscous, silt that covers this portion of the dig. Archeology by Braille he called it; seemed to expect me to laugh like it was an old joke that I should already know. He'd done that a lot in the two days since I'd met him, like I was an old friend who'd lost their memory.

There had been something expectant in the way he'd asked, as though he knew my answer before he'd offered to take me with him and the contrary nature that got me exiled to the back of beyond drowning in dust flared to life. I couldn't possibly drop everything and run off with him, my professor had set me my current task as a test of my mettle, a final hurtle before I had to stand in front of the committee viva voce and defend my life.

There was a flicker of surprise when I said no and I wanted to do something else to elicit that shocked expression but he was gone before I could and I was left breathing in finely ground grit, tasting regret like metal on my tongue and thinking 'I should have gone with him'.

Professor River Song, archaeologist. Please, no wisecracks, I promise I've heard them all.

In any case I'm not one of those stuffy bookish types you find crawling all over University's or bumbling about archaeological sites. I am an adventurer in the realm of ideas, and I have pitched my camp at a crossroads: the intersection of science and history.

Occasionally I am not alone. There's a man, an impossible man, and blue box and any 'when' that takes our fancy. But frequently I am alone. There's no one except my graduate students and my memories.

Makes life interesting never knowing what or who is around the corner. Makes it an adventure.