Chapter Text
It is about as easy to allow a person you love to slip through your fingers as it is to declare a hard-fought battle lost. For the one that they call the Doctor, both tasks are nigh impossible. Attachment has always been her undoing. It is why she left the Jedi Order all those years ago and entered into self-imposed exile, and it is why she is suffering now.
A high fever has ravaged her wife’s body for over a week. River’s illness began as a simple enough infection – a minor injury gone sour – but it has since raged into a mysterious inferno, more persistent than any plague the Doctor has ever encountered. Perhaps if she had become a Jedi Consular and dedicated more of her training to the art of healing rather than the art of combat, she might have some relevant experience upon which to draw, but her journey as a healer is a somewhat recent development. The backwater bog planet of Olath rarely sees any peculiar illnesses of note. The Doctor usually treats ulcers and upset stomachs and minor scrapes. She pumps water from near-drowned lungs and gives out root tea to those who suffer from bad coughs.
That is not enough knowledge to fight this.
She is not enough to fight this.
She tells River as much, a rushed, fearful, bubbling torrent of words and apologies, but River merely raises a hand, caresses the side of the Doctor’s face, and offers up a quiet, loving hush. River isn't always a woman of softness. She's dynamic, restless, impertinent, aggressive, with only passing moments of tenderness between the rushes of activity.The Doctor adored this about River. She, too, has a habit of running through life without bothering to breathe, so they were well-matched.
Now, however, with her wife teetering the edge of oblivion, that energy is tempered. The Doctor both clings to this newfound softness and resents it in equal measure. Time together is precious, but the slow march towards death is terrifying.
She wants to keep this love forever. She wants the spirited joy to return to River’s body. She wants things on Olath to be the way they have always been. She doesn't want to face what increasingly seems inevitable, which is that all beings must die and all stories must, eventually, end.
She tries to outrun that inevitable truth. She labors over her wife’s bedside as often as she can, offering water and damp towels and a steady fan against the moist and humid heat of this backwater planet. She barely leaves her wife’s side, choosing to sleep on the dirt floor of the quarantine hut rather than return to her own home.
In a corner, her apprentice, Bill, often sits and flips through the records of the village healer who had preceded the Doctor, searching for any mentions of diseases like this and the methods by which they could be treated.
On one dread-drenched day, Bill raises a hand in her studious corner of the hut. The Doctor’s head snaps upward, hearts beating, eyes hopeful, ears primed for a viable solution, only to be met with a well-meaning impossibility. “The Jedi apparently use the Force to seek out the source of disease and treat it at its source. If there's one in this system, we could –”
The words die on Bill’s tongue as the Doctor shakes her head.
No one on this planet knows the truth of the Doctor’s history, and with luck, none of them will ever know it. To these people, she is a nomad. A traveler. An off-worlder who swept in and then chose to stay. They do not know about her life before, her broken vows, her connection to the Force, her long history of mistakes. Even in her desperation, she knows that she cannot contact the Order, nor can she tap into the Force herself. To do so would invite unthinkable consequences, not only into her own life, but the lives of the people around her.
In fact, the Doctor spent the entirety of her exile in partial, passive meditation, holding a wall between the Force-sensitive parts of her mind and the power beyond. To break that wall would mean letting in things she would rather keep out. She successfully vanished off the map, sank into the deep space, became dead to all those to who are best left avoided. Without sensing her in the Force, no one would ever think to look for her here, on a tiny bog planet in the Outer Reaches. This place is safe only as long as she remains unknown.
Still, every passing moment, every scraping breath leaves River slightly worse. Slightly hollower. The color is all but gone from her face, warm pink replaced with a wan gray that matches the dull marshes that lurk just outside their hut. Deep purple circles sink below her eyes, dehydrated wells of pure exhaustion. Her once curly hair even seems to have gone dead and lifeless, flat and dull against the pillow. It challenges the Doctor’s resolve, introducing doubts, a consideration of risks versus rewards.
Nights and days wear on, the planet turns, frogs sing, and River does not improve. There is seemingly no root, no flower, no leaf on this planet that will help her.
The certainty of death hangs over the room like a shroud, and the dreadful horror of broken attachment lurks just over the Doctor’s shoulder. Perhaps if she was capable of following the Jedi Code, she might have spared herself this pain. She would have a clear mind and a clear conscience and not found herself tangled in the weeds of marriage and devotion and loss. Logically, the Doctor knows that she should be grieving for River in these moments – a life left unfinished, potential left unfulfilled, experiences left unloved – but she keeps getting in her own way, selfishly pining for the things they might no longer get to experience together. No matter how many times she attempts to talk herself out of it, she catches herself lamenting her own loss over anyone else’s.
That failure only serves to compound her emotions, leaving her frustrated, angry, disappointed. She snaps at Bill to get lost at odd intervals, frets over River in her wife's few moments of consciousness, bites her fingernails down to the quick. This worsens the Doctor’s aching sense of desperation. She can't even let River die correctly, nonetheless save her life.
When River’s breaths become so shallow that her chest barely rises and the heat radiating from her body becomes so intense that it could power a small sun, the Doctor gives into her more dangerous desires. She does something foolish. She reaches out both of her hands, twining River’s burning fingers with her own, and closes her eyes.
The Doctor stretches back into the depths of her mind, seeking out the dam that holds back her connection to the Force, and breaks it. With a suddenness that nearly knocks her from her stool, her body begins to buzz with energy. She is far too aware of everything around her. Individual hairs on her arms stand on edge with each beat of an insect’s wings in the wicker weave of the huts walls. Bill and River are not just physically present, but mentally as well. She feels River slipping away, and she reaches deep into the Force to try to find the rot and cut it out.
Perhaps a Jedi Consular could have done so successfully.
Perhaps they could have found the cause, broken the fever, and reversed the ravages on River’s body.
But the Doctor lacks that insight.
As badly as she might wish to live up to her name, she was raised and trained for combat and war. She cannot protect people passively.
A single tear drips down her cheek, drawing a line through the sweat and grime on her face. She cannot drag River back, no matter how badly she wishes to. She cannot fix this.
So she finally does what she has so dreaded.
She says goodbye.
All the while, the dam in her mind remains open.
In the Force, their connection feels stronger. The last throes of the dying no longer feel so feeble. She presses their foreheads together and whispers her apologies and a promise that they will be together again.
So overwhelming is her grief, so compulsive the ritual, that she does not notice the faint tug on an old Force-bond, a slipping through time and space as the person at the other end steps in, takes his bearings, and leaves again.
She merely shakes and cries and holds her wife in one final embrace.
Bill notices something shift in the room, but she assumes that this is merely the spectre of death, finally come to call, and begins to make arrangements for the funeral. She knows that the Doctor is unlikely to be of much help, given the subject at hand.
Funerals on Olath are a complicated and quick business. The heat and humidity set a clock ticking from the very moment of death, instilling a frantic need in everyone to complete the burial before too much decay has set into the body. River has scarcely loosed her last breath when Bill slips from the hut and races down the muddy path, alerting those who have jobs to do.
This is familiar work to her. She's been the Doctor’s apprentice for some time now, and often, the people of their village pass while in the Doctor’s care. Such is the burden of a healer. Not everyone can be saved. Most deaths happen in their presence.
There are shrouds to embroider and pegs to carve. Empty spots to locate in the depths of the bog. Flowers to harvest. Mourning clothes to don. Mounting the troops is slow, painful work, and Bill must swallow back her own grief to finish it. There will be time enough to cry later, when the body sinks and the job is done.
It takes two nights for all the preparation to finish. Right on schedule.
Bill leaves the Doctor as unbothered as possible until she must, inevitably, hostage negotiate. It takes much time and dedication to convince her mentor to clean up, brush her hair, and rub an herbal oil on her eyes to reduce the swelling.
In a numb haze, the Doctor attempts to pull herself together, shrugging on a tightly woven green shawl and tying the front of her hair back to keep it out of her face. A brown cord holds up her trousers, and she does not bother to put boots on her feet. There's no point. They'd be swallowed, devoured by the thick mud at the bottom of the bog.
She tucks a knife into the pouch of her belt so that she can open bottles when the rituals reach their climax before slinking out of her home to meet with the rest of the village at the edge of the water.
Bill hovers close at the Doctor’s side, teeth gnawing at her bottom lip as she quietly runs through a checklist, wondering if any step of this process has been forgotten. She does not think so, and she dares to breathe a sigh of relief.
River's is not the only ghost among the villagers that morning. A dense fog hangs in the air, resting heavily on the shoulders of all those who gather in it. This crowd of shadows parts for the Doctor as she steps towards the wooden altar at the very edge of the bog, where River’s body sits tightly wrapped in a woven funeral shroud.
For a hearts-rending moment, the Doctor is tempted to peel back the layers, unwrap the body, look into her wife’s face for the last time – but she clasps her hands into fists and stubbornly resists the urge. This is not her culture, nor her beliefs, but she will respect them. She will send off River in the way that all the dead of this planet are sent off. She will do her assigned duty as the grieving spouse.
A small child comes up behind her, tugging at a corner of her shawl to get her attention before handing her a mallet and four roughly hewn wooden stakes.
The Doctor’s resolve wavers. A hard swallow traces the line of her throat, but she accepts the tools with a sharp, silent nod.
Several of the strongest villagers step forward. Together, they lift the body from the altar and begin the first of many long, trudging steps into the bog. The Doctor follows close behind them, focusing on the feeling of mud under her feet and the chill of the water as it seeps through her clothes so that she does not have to contemplate what she must do.
They stop at the pre-approved resting spot, and the work begins. A stake at each corner of the shroud sinks the body, holding it captive at the bottom of the bog. It is difficult work, a matter of deep breaths and submerged bodies and the hollow, water-logged ring of hammers on spikes.
When the Doctor finally finishes, she stands, soaked to the bone and covered in mud, above the place where her once vibrant wife now rests, and cries.
At the shore, someone sings a song that the Doctor never learned, and others join in the chorus, calling for remembrance of those that have passed from this world.
A shudder runs through her body as a wind rips through the air and harmonies clash against her ears.
There is something equal parts comforting and sinister about knowing that her wife’s body will be forever kept at the bottom of that bog – preserved alongside those of all who have ever died here, fresh as the day it was buried.
A near-forgotten lesson at the back of her mind dares to remind her that it doesn't matter where River's body lays, because all things remain part of the Force. She shoves that thought aside. Being part of the Force is not the same as being here – living, breathing, laughing – and curse those who would insist otherwise.
The Doctor drags herself out of the bog in a dazed stupor, and together, the adults wander to the local tavern. It is tradition that once the corpse is secured, those who are left behind drown themselves, drinking away the pain to the point of passing out. It is part of the rite, a completion of the circle. They all must sink together.
The Doctor is handed first one bottle and then another by friends who suddenly feel like strangers, diligently popping each cap with the tip of her knife.
She barely speaks.
That is odd for her. She is typically a babbler, filling the silence with every thought and impulse that crosses her mind, but today, she lacks the energy.
The mud that coats her body begins to dry, greedily sucking the remaining moisture from her skin and leaving her even more susceptible to drunkenness.
As the day wears on, people slowly leave.
The room gets quieter.
Only a handful of people remain. Bill gently hands the Doctor another bottle, bravely managing a bleary smile and a half-joking, “I was hoping to be carrying you out of here by now.”
But unconsciousness evades the Doctor. No one has ever lasted this long before. Perhaps it is because she is not really one of them. She is Gallifreyan, not of Olath. Her body is different. It struggles to metabolize the alcohol in the same way.
She cannot stop treading water, cannot sink below the waves and let her lungs fill to bursting.
She wants to sleep, but she cannot.
She drinks and drinks and yearns and yearns, but she finds no relief.
Even when night falls, she remains in that stone building, slumped against the counter, her funeral party reduced to one person – the tavern owner who remains only out of obligation.
“Wish I had something stronger to give you,” he muses, “But we don't get much out here. As you know, the trade isn't good.”
The Doctor does not reply, instead choosing to wordlessly nurse her current bottle. Now is not the time for politics.
The owner of the tavern continues to babble at her, offering her stories and odd words of comfort, probably more in an effort to keep himself awake than out of any real belief that it will heal her broken hearts.
After what feels like half an age’s worth of suffering, the wooden door behind them swings open.
A pair of heavily booted feet pad on the dirt floor. A cloak swishes around ankles. Oiled leather creaks at the joints. The smell of core Planet cologne enters the air. Once, the Doctor might have been able to recognize the scent immediately, but it passes her by. She scrunches her nose and refuses to turn around and face the newcomer. She is a fixture of this place now – a statue cast in mud and clay.
Everyone in the village knows what happened. They will understand that she does not greet them.
The new presence draws closer.
The Doctor finishes her current bottle, slamming it on the counter as she anticipates that this newcomer will no doubt buy her another, perhaps finally bringing her one step closer to the promised rest.
A shadow falls over the Doctor’s corner of the bar.
Metal clatters against stone as a silver cylinder drops onto the table before her. It takes her drunken mind a moment to register what it is -- the familiar ridges, buttons, switches -- and once she does, the numbness of grief is swept away by the insatiable demand of rage.
A lightsaber.
Her lightsaber.
She recoils as though it were aflame. A scar on her arm twinges at the memories that flood into her. It was taken from her a lifetime ago, by a Sith Lord who wore the voice of an old friend. She has not seen it since.
She has not wanted to see it since.
A voice she hasn't heard in years snakes through the air above her.
"Surprise."
The Doctor rises sloppily from her seat, small knife drawn, intent on striking him but she falls to the ground. A pair of polished black boots fill her hazy vision. At least she doesn't have to make eye contact with him.
She groans, pressing her forehead to the cool dirt floor. The mud that so coats her face cracks and begins to itch. In her inebriated state, she's not entirely convinced that she is not hallucinating. She has hallucinated him before. Such is the nature of the bond that runs between them.
“Go away. You're not welcome here,” she murmurs.
The Sith Lord bends down, slides a gloved hand beneath her chin, and raises her face. He studies it for a moment before dropping it again, standing.
“Leave us. Lock the door,” he demands of the bartender, his voice smooth and unbothered, as if he was inquiring about the weather.
“It doesn't have a lock.”
He activates his lightsaber in an instant. Red light flickers. Plasma crackles against the damp air around them.
The bartender scurries past, running out into the darkness and slamming the door shut behind him.
The Sith Lord pokes the Doctor’s shoulder with his toe, turning her onto her back. The world seems to spin. When it's steadied again, she squints up at him, her reactions slow, her vision cloudy.
“You're interrupting,” she says curtly. “There are rules for this sort of rite, you know.” Her words stumble, slur, stagger. She is not clever. She is not witty. She is not heroic. She is not a dashing Jedi Knight ready for a fight.
She is a drunk widow sprawled across the floor.
“There are far more efficient ways to reach oblivion.”
Though he does not touch her directly, a pressure constricts her throat. Breath catches. Her lungs burn. Every cell of her body cries out in pain as one last set of tears sweeps down her face.
Finally, after so many hours of failure, the murky waters of unconsciousness rise up to envelop her, and she sinks into the darkness.