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Not All These Things Are Lies:
It takes five years, linear relative to her, before River trusts herself around the Doctor unbound. She uses her own handcuffs and he never comments on the way she holds both them and her wrists out to him, tense until he locks the cool steel binders in place. She likes the way his hands flutter against her skin and how affection (love) makes his old eyes ageless. They both ignore the way her hands always brush briefly against his chest after he’s cuffed her as she pulls her arms back to hang awkwardly in front of her. Soft, as if the touch is accidental, her fingers gently slide across the two points above his ribs right where she can jab and twist to snap, cuffs or no, stabbing his own bones into both his hearts before regeneration would have time to take effect.
Rarely are Prisoner Song’s absences from Stormcage noticed. Formally anyway. But it does occasionally happen when there is a combination of poor, or rushed, timing and new guards.
She was once missing from Stormcage for three days. The manhunt ended on day four, when they finally noticed she was back in her cell. Furious and embarrassed, the Warden had her escorted to an interview room. Prisoner Song answered no questions, except to promise, with a laugh, that she’d never let her husband drive again.
The caviler way she always spoke about the man she murdered, as if her imprisonment was a nuisance that was entirely the victim’s fault, has caused more than one guard at Stormcage to resign. Something about the playful, yet completely sane, way she talked about her victim made it terrifying. And everyone working at the prison, from the Warden down to the temp file clerks, knew that if Prisoner Song handed you a resignation form, you filled it out.
• Her marriage to the Doctor is not the only time River tried to change a fixed point. It is, however, the last time.
• After they lost Melody and discover she was River, Amy and Rory never had sex in the Tardis again. They also never continuously travelled with the Doctor again.
• Once she is uploaded to the Library, River “lives” out the rest of her existence never again having physical form.
• This does not mean she stays in the Library.
• Mels and Rory both said they wanted to be nurses when they grew up when asked in their second grade class. Rory, because he really wanted to be one. Mels, because the other choices were doctor or astronaut and she had to pick something. (Amy chose doctor and astronaut).
• Linear relative to him, Professor River Song was the first (almost) Timelord Jack Harkness ever met. She made sure he never forgot the experience.
• Linear relative to her, he deserved it.
Melody’s fingers pick nervously at the peeling white paint of the doorframe. She’s not allowed up here and a bad feeling twists her stomach in knots. She turns to look longingly towards the stairs Caretaker says she is too small to manage on her own because humans her size can’t, but Melody never quite completes the motion, her head snapping back around, her breathing fast, and her hearts hammering like she’s scared.
Aunt Kovarian is suddenly standing in front of her and she smiles down at Melody, cold fingers cupping her cheek and making Melody shiver. Her one eye meets Melody’s own, before unfocusing and gazing over Melody’s shoulder. She looks passed her like Melody is not even there, even though Aunt Kovarian’s fingers are still pressed against Melody’s skin.
“Auntie?” Melody’s voice quavers slightly. Aunt Kovarian’s eye blinks and she looks back down at her.
“Come along, Melody.” Aunt Kovarian smiles again and her hand drops from Melody’s cheek, reaching to take Melody’s hand in her own.
For a moment, Melody dares hope that this is one of Aunt Kovarian’s good moods. She takes the hand and they start to walk together away from the stairs, although Melody still hangs back a little, cautious. Usually Aunt Kovarian just looks at Melody like she is a stranger, cold and distant. On bad days her eyes are hard as stones and her lips curve up like she is laughing at a joke no-one else knows, like she is laughing at Melody. But sometimes her smiles aren’t quite so mean and she speaks softly, almost like a real Aunt. Today might be one of those days. Melody’s hearts beat faster, but her hopes are dashed by Aunt Kovarian’s next words. “Don’t dawdle Melody, I have a special lesson for you.”
“But,” Melody pleads. “These are your rooms. I’m not allowed up here.”
“Quite right,” Aunt Kovarian replies. “But you may come up with me when I am here.” Her hand is griping Melody’s just a touch too tightly and she tugs Melody to make her move faster, leading her down a hall with steps that make Melody take two for every one of Aunt Kovarian’s. They go into a bathroom and Aunt Kovarian picks Melody up and sets her on the counter. It is cold and hard through Melody’s thin trousers and she draws her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs.
“Now,” Aunt Kovarian says. Her face is turned slightly away and Melody can’t see her eye at all, only the silver curve of the patch. “I am going to teach you how to put on lipstick. Would you like that Melody? To wear makeup like a big girl?”
Melody looks at Aunt Kovarian’s dark lips, stark again pale skin, and the hard lines around her mouth. She looks quickly away and can’t bring herself to answer.
Aunt Kovarian doesn’t seem to notice. “Look,” she holds up a silver tube for Melody to see. “This is going to be very special lipstick, so we have to put it on the right way. If you don’t, you could hurt yourself very, very badly Melody. Do you understand? This is going to be a weapon.”
“Against the Doctor,” Melody finishes, shivering.
“My brave girl,” Aunt Kovarian smoothes Melody’s bangs back from her forehead and Melody leans into the gentle touch. Aunt Kovarian takes the silver tube and opens the cap. “Now, one touch from this will kill any Timelord. Even you, Melody. So, I have something else for us to practice with.”
Melody nearly sags with relief as Aunt Kovarian puts the cap back on again and sets the silver tube aside. From a drawer, she pulls out another tube that is identical in everyway that Melody can see. “This lipstick is hallucinogenic,” she tells Melody. “It will not kill you if you put it on wrong. Instead, it will make you dizzy and you will feel sick, before you find yourself trapped in an imaginary place where you will see whatever I tell you to see. Melody, it is going to be an awful place, because I want you to learn not to let it touch you. When you use the real lipstick, that touch will kill you; I am going to make it an awful place to make sure you learn. To keep you safe. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Aunt Kovarian,” Melody whispers.
Aunt Kovarian smiles her other smile, her bad smile, and she opens the tube. She shows Melody that the lipstick is really two lipsticks, even though it only looks like one; one side merely a colored wax that will protect her lips from the other side, the poisoned side. She teaches Melody how to pucker her lips and tilt the tube to swipe only one side at a time, wax in one direction and back in the other with the poison.
Melody’s hands are clammy when Aunt Kovarian presses the lipstick tube into her palm and forces Melody’s fingers closed over it. On her first try, Melody is no good, covering a lot of the area around her lips as well her lips themselves and the color is splotchy as she presses too hard with the wax side and not hard enough on the poison side. Aunt Kovarian makes her wipe it off and do it again. And again.
Melody is trembling harder every time she does it, her hands unsteady, but she presses gamely onward. If she gets it right, she can stop. And everyone is always so happy when she does get things right. Aunt Kovarian says everyone is counting on Melody. Melody’s fear is shameful and she knows that is the weakness, the bad Timelord part of her. She needs to succeed before she stops. To protect everyone. To save her mum and dad from the Doctor. To get them back.
That last part is her secret dream. She glances up at Aunt Kovarian fearfully and begins to apply the lipstick again.
Melody can feel sweat in the small of her back making her shirt begin to cling to her. Her mouth is so dry it starts to itch. As her throat works to swallow, Melody licks her lips without realizing it.
When she comes back to herself, Caretaker holds a glass of water to her lips, an arm around her shoulders as he sits with her on her bed. “My poor girl,” he mummers. His eyes are vague, but he is always, always kind and Melody curls into his side, sobbing until her chest aches. “Sick, like all little children get,” he tells her and she wishes she were normal, like all children. Human. She loves him all the more, because he doesn’t ever realize what she really is. “Yes,” he continues. “Fevers and nightmares. Like all children. Well, don’t you mind now, you’ll be better soon. I will take care of you.”
Melody lets him sooth her to sleep, but even as she drifts off, she holds the image of the two lipstick tubes in her mind, to make sure she doesn’t forget. Two silver tubes, a tiny gouge in the base of the hallucinogenic one from her pinky nail, too small for Aunt Kovarian to notice, beside the unblemished silver tube of deadly poison.
Even for a Timelord, time is relative. Knowing exactly how long she has been under the water does not make the time pass any easier and, worse, River can feel the rigidity of the fix point approaching, moments becoming less and less malleable and she clings to her plan. Her throat is dry inside the white suit and hours pass. Buried under the water, her throat is dry. But, as the time drags, she doesn’t lick her lips.
• River and the Doctor get married across all of time and space, except, sometimes, they don’t.
• Amy was always barren. The reason she read as both pregnant and not-pregnant when the Doctor scanned her wasn’t because of the disjoint between Amy’s real body and the flesh, but because the Tardis was helping Melody by growing her partially in a Timelord Loom.
• Amy and Rory never thought of the Flesh as real enough to mourn the loss of their other child. River and the Doctor are the only ones to ever grieve for River’s twin.
• River Song caught herself shouting ‘and don’t wander off!’ at the backs of her archeology students as they dispersed to set up the dig site on Old Miranda and wondered just when it was that she had become just like the man she’d once sworn to murder. By which she meant hypocritically responsible and adult.
• In his old age, Strax was Melody’s wet nurse after the Silence stole her.
• Strax was also her first instructor in the art of combat. Training the Doctor’s killer was the greatest compliment he could think to pay to either of them, as a warrior’s worth is defined by their enemies. Because of his friendship with both of them, Strax was doing his level best to teach Melody to assassinate the Doctor. Of course, Strax’s lessons covered Timelord first aid too, because a warrior needed to care for their wounds on the battlefield.
• He might have included the fact that regeneration energy could be used to heal.
• But only because it was true.
River turns on the Tardis’ stealth systems as they start to move out of generic Vortex time and into a particular timestream, where the moments are all accounted for and wrapped up in liner lives. It’s a little tricky, like dancing with a blindfolded partner, as the Tardis is limited in what she can perceive by the same system that limits how well others can perceive her, but River’s always been a skilled dancer. She and Rory used to dance together in Leadsworth, him practicing for Amy and Mels getting her father to teach her how to do all the old fashioned dances. Rory even let her stand on his shoes once, but they were too close in size and that had ended in a tangle and bruises. Even so, he hadn’t been mad or blamed her; Rory had always just accepted Mels’ quirks with affection and (sometimes exasperated) patience, the same as he did for Amy. Back then he was one of the few people River had felt safe being a little silly and odd with; she took after her mum like that.
If she had had lips and a face, the Tardis would have had a very Rory-like expression on it as River guides her into a needlessly difficult landing: a confused, but accepting smile, eyes full of caring. Instead, the consol is warm under Rivers fingertips and an indulgent hum comes from all around, more in River’s mind than the air. The Tardis feels like a parent puzzled by her daughter’s silly antics, but willing to go through a little trouble to make her child happy. It’s a secret they share between them as the Doctor glares at River as she finishes spinning the Tardis to a silent stop, parking them with a flourish.
She ignores him, or pretends to, keeping an eye on his expression as she double checks that they are where they are meant to be. And anything else she can think to double check. Right when her husband looks like he is about to burst, River glaces up from the controls and catches his gaze. “Sweetie, don’t tell me you’ve still been driving with the breaks on? Honestly!”
“It’s a brilliant sound!” The exclamation is cross and defiant and defensive all at once, and River laughs in delight. Oh, but he is so easy to wind up.
“Of course it is, Sweetie.” She rolls her eyes at him and flips off the stealth systems before he can figure out how she’s done it. He will do one day, she knows.
But, apparently, not today.
Mrs. Donna Temple sometimes saw a blond woman with uncontrollable curls wearing a white dress. Nobody else ever seemed to notice her, even when Donna pointed her out. The woman never stayed for more than a moment or two and once Donna could have sworn someone had walked through her. It was probably just a trick of the light, but, the next time Donna spotted her, she made it a point to go over and say hello. The woman had squinted at Donna, like she was having trouble making her out, even though it was bright and sunny and Donna was standing not three feet away.
“Doctor?” the woman had asked.
“Sorry, no,” Donna replied, doing her best to not show how the other woman’s question had left her unsettled for no bloody reason.
The woman had frowned and walked away... at least Donna thought she walked away.
Donna tried to tell herself she was glad the woman was looking for someone else, because, in that moment, Donna was not at all sure the woman wasn’t a ghost. Which was barmy. After all, what kind of person would haunt a nobody like Donna?
But Donna was the only one who saw her. And Donna always saw her.
• The Tardis didn’t let Mels save her parents right away in Berlin. First they made several practice landings in various times and places until she had mastered the controls. It only took a century or two.
• Eight year old Melody was forced into the space suit, taken to a tear in the Vortex, and made to look into it. It was as close as the Silence could get to the Untempered Schism on Gallifrey.
• Melody was not one of the ones who ran.
• River never did kill the Doctor in any lasting way, but she was the cause of the final death of several other Timelords. No learning is ever wasted.
• Mels was not responsible for Amy thinking that Rory was gay. That misunderstanding was Brian Williams’ fault.
• The Tardis was the one who told River the Doctor’s name.
• The entire volume of Professor Song’s works on Timelords is required reading for anyone who wants to join the Time Agency.
• River killed the Doctor three times. First in Berlin. Second at Lake Silencio. Third on Gallifrey, for the last time and for real. Not all fates can be avoided.
• Once, River stayed on the Tardis with the Doctor for over a week before he realized she was there.
• Mels came out to Amy and Rory as bi when they were all (supposedly) fourteen. Rory spent the entire week after that terrified that she might be interested in Amy, and wondering what it would mean if he was in love with the same girl as his best friend. He wanted Amy to notice him more than anything, but not if it meant she’d also be breaking Mels’ heart.
• River and the Doctor had children.
• River and the Doctor never had children.
• To help her fight her conditioning, the Doctor took River to have tea with his old friend, Winston Churchill. And the three of them talked about Berlin.
• Then he took her to Pompeii. Then Mars.
Nothing ever happens in Leadsworth. Mels Zucker is trouble.
Anyone in Ledsworth will swear both these things are true, including the police. So perhaps they should say, instead, that nothing ever happens in Leadsworth except Mels Zucker, but they don’t, because most of Mels’ trouble can’t be proven, not beyond reasonable doubt. And they are half right. While they only have had cause to arrest Mels a handful of times for the mischief she’d gotten into, there was a lot more they never caught her at.
It was because Mels was so hard to catch that Amy was shocked when Mels needed bail for stealing a bus, of all things. But over the course of that month Mels had actually broken into every vehicle in town and the odds had eventually caught up with her. No one could ever explain why ATMOS never worked in Leadsworth, but the running joke was that they weren’t important enough to be on any maps.
After all, nothing ever happened in Leadsworth.
The psychic assault against River’s mind feels like pressure, like water against a suit, her protections fracturing, cracking, and breaking under a force shoving inwards from all sides. She is barely able to turn her head enough to catch the Doctor’s eye. He nods, once, his jaw clenched tight. Through the pain she musters a smile.
There is nothing better than the two of them on the same page. Nothing more powerful. River hopes that doesn’t end up being bravado, this time.
Her fingers close around his, holding hands as the protections around their minds shatter, both of them ceasing to resist the intrusion at the same time. She feels triumph that is not her own.
You will make your own prisons, voices promise. Which is not reassuring. River knows that both the Doctor and herself have enough places in their heads that could pass as an eternal hell. She’s been trapped in them before, in the darkness inside of herself, without the aid of these creatures.
But just because the creatures have broken into their minds and have an abundance of bad memories to choose from doesn’t mean they are defenseless, doesn’t mean they’ve lost. River’s mind and the Doctor’s are their greatest weapons.
Catch us if you can! River taunts, ready to run. Through her own mind.
But the creatures ignore her, all of them swarming, chasing the Doctor deeper and deeper into his head. River leaves herself to psychically follow.
She’s been here, in his mind, before, but the Doctor is so old, ancient, and there are secrets he keeps, even from her. And other things he can no longer bare to think about, things he represses from himself. There is so much she hasn’t seen, so many memories to get lost in.
He is clever though.
You think it’s hot. The Doctor’s thought comes to her.
I think you are ridiculous.
The creatures have begun webbing him into the worst places in his head, the ones that are the hardest for a person to pull themselves out of, even without being locked in. The pits of grief and guilt and pain and sadness. Hatred and terrible, terrible loss. And the Doctor runs further into them, but he’s not fleeing, he is leading.
Leading the creatures right into the center of the Time War, the heart of his self-loathing and repression. And the creatures chase him, straight into the plasma gun of the War Doctor at the center of it all. Several of creatures scream defiantly as her husband, two versions of him, face them with the same face. The Doctor whose face is lined and drawn and cold. With the face of the Doctor that accepts violence as necessary. The face River sees in any regeneration every time he looks away from her weapon without objecting. The face after he gives a last warning and isn’t heeded. The face that pulls the trigger.
And the Doctor does pull the trigger. His current regeneration looks half-broken with sorrow, but the gun is in his hands as well. There is, after all, just the one man underneath every form. She knows it hurts him, but she loves how much he doesn’t want this. She isn’t like that. River picks off the ones that dodge his blasts, not so much using a gun as being one. Underneath everything, she has always been a weapon.
And when she does let herself go, she enjoys it. River has just learned to make sure that that isn’t why she lets go, that she only kills when it is necessary. That she only kills when the Doctor would kill, if she weren’t there.
Or, in this case, when she is.
There are two of the creatures that take the place of every one they slay. The creatures, perceiving both of the Doctor and River are now in a moment that will be hard for them to leave, start closing off all the exits as they dodge the blasts of fire, trying to trap them inside one of the nastiest of the Doctor’s memories. But before they can shut the last exit, River shoves her husband out, into another memory tied tightly to this one by association, by how much the Doctor hates it.
Tied by grief.
River, NO!
The Doctor tries block her and, when that fails, to shove them back out, back into the trap, but she refuses to let him.
They are in a room surrounded by shadows and the smell of old paper and River has been in enough tombs to recognize one. She hears her own voice.
Funny thing is, this means you’ve always known...
River gasps as the Doctor grabs the memory and holds it still, refusing to go forward.
Spoliers, Dear. He is crying. You can’t know this River, you can’t!
They will catch us you idiot!
With the memory frozen River has time to make out the details. The Doctor is chained to something along side his previous self, a face that River didn’t know knew her, but the room is dark and she can’t make out exactly what it is he is chained to. The look of horror, the feeling of desperation are sharp and clear and River can feel the ache of his emotions in her chest. There are wires in her hands and she is locked in tandem with her future self. But, under River’s hands, the wires feel sticky and wrong and when she looks again the shackles around the Doctors’ wrists are webbing, not steel.
There is movement in the shadows, although the memory is still stopped; sometimes it is only flickers of dust floating out into what little light is in this place and sometimes it is a skittering limb jerking back out of the sight.
Oh.
The Doctor meets River’s eyes and she knows. This could save them. But to unleash whatever is in the shadows with the creatures, he has to allow this memory to unfold. To do that... River looks down at the wires in her hands.
Oh.
She smiles.
Remember, Sweetie.
He shakes his head, refusing.
Remember Doctor. River insists. The stubborn idiot. Trust me.
You don’t get to die for me this time!
I don’t plan to!
He can’t hold it back forever, but she can’t wait for him. River steals the words and starts speaking, pushing them forward: Funny thing is, this means you've always known how I was going to die. All the time we've been together, you knew I was coming here. The last time I saw you, the real you — the future you, I mean — you turned up on my doorstep, with a new haircut and a suit. You took me to Darillium to see the singing towers. Oh, what a night that was! The towers sang and you cried. You wouldn't tell me why, but I suppose you knew it was time. My time. Time to come to the Library. You even gave me your screwdriver; that should've been a clue.
You can let me do this! Both of him protest.
Her head shakes. If you die here, it'll mean I've never met you!
River, this is her Doctor now. If you die in here, in my mind, you will rewrite everything. The memory continues, Time can be rewritten.
Not those times. Not one line! Don't you dare! It's okay. It’s okay, River adds into her own dialog. Trust me Doctor, trust us. And be ready to run. You and me, time and space. You watch us run!
River, you know my name. You whispered my name in my ear! There's only one reason I would ever tell anyone my name. There's only one time I could. Both of him are crying now, but her husband has been this whole time, the one who knew what was coming.
Hush now. Spoilers. And then River smirks, nasty and cruel and cold. Well done Doctor, she sneers, forcing a few more new words into the script. He needs to hear this before she dies. You’ve wrecked this one, haven’t you? Forcing your wife, forcing me, to live with the knowledge of my own death. You couldn’t even keep one little secret to protect poor lost Melody Pond. All those years of lying, what a waste!
River’s death is nearly upon her, but that is exactly what she wants. Wires could hold the current that can, will, kill her. Wire could. River forces the webs holding her, just for an instant, pushing back against the creatures with the full force of her mind, to be webs for a critical split second. As they ignite and fall away, River uses her “death,” future her leaving in the Doctor’s memory by the necessity of no-longer existing, to open a new River-sized doorway, back out of his mind and into her own body.
And with a lurch she is in the real world again, sprawled on the floor, eyes blinking open.
She crawls over to the Doctor. “Come on Sweetie,” she pleads. He had been certain that whatever was in the shadows could finish off the remaining creatures. But the Doctor lies. He could do so with thoughts just as easily as words.
Just as she could.
He was honest this time, however; 12.9 seconds of heart wrenching waiting and his eyes blink open. She grabs his face with her hands and pressed a relived kiss to his lips. “Oh Sweetie!” Her relief is genuine and she uses the honesty of that emotion. “I was so worried. I lost you after the Time War! Why did you fight me, you stupid idiot? I was very nearly trapped there when you blocked me from following you!” She runs an angry, aggravated hand over her hair. “It was lucky for me they were intent on you or you really would be the last of the Timelords!”
“But you,” he starts, then forces himself to stop. Before he says anything else. No reason the second her couldn’t have been a trick of the creatures, every reason for it to have been one. A hostage, something to keep him from fighting back, something else for him to feel guilty over, more nasty emotions to cling to him, making it even harder for him to break free. Especially given what she’d said to him.
“Do it again,” she tells him. “And I’ll slap you.” Inwardly she is relived. He’s always been dangerously good at seeing through her. The secret he was holding to protect her is now one she will hold to protect him. It will be her last gift to him. He can die without her ever making him take her to the singing towers of Darillium. River will never make him say goodbye to her for a second time; she can let him live every moment believing they’ll always have one more time together.
He’s rubbish at goodbyes anyway.
• The only two wedding ceremonies River and the Doctor never had (that they were allowed to have depending on planetary customs) were the ones typical from her own time on Earth and from his own time on Gallifrey, because, after the Time War and the Angels, neither of them had parents that were able to attend.
• The game River made about shooting the 11th Doctor’s hats never would have happened if Amy hadn’t told Mels about it in the first place. After that it was either shoot the hats or create a universe collapsing paradox. Amy was always horrible about spoilers and rules were rules for a reason.
• River wasn’t there when the Doctor died at Trenzalore. She arrived moments after he was already gone; it was the first time in her life she’d ever been late when she was the one driving. All she found was an empty battle field with no one left alive to tell her he had regenerated.
• Eight year old Melody saw a recording of the moon landing playing through a store window the first day she was free and wandering in Florida. For the next year, she’d find herself holding weapons she didn’t remember picking up, but after that year she never forgot a moment of time ever again. And, as far as she could tell, none of Melody’s former captors had ever come looking for her, either.
• River never met Anthony Williams and she only knew Brian and Tabitha as Mels. Amy and Rory never told anyone in their non-Doctor lives they had had, or had lost, a daughter.
• Later regenerations of the Doctor use the name John Pond rather than John Smith. That was the way it worked for Rory, after all. River wondered why he didn’t go by Song (a part of her even wondering if he was doing it more for Amy’s sake than hers) until the Doctor’s only female regeneration (re)introduced herself to River by bursting out of the Tardis trailing golden regeneration energy and shouting: “River! River! I’m POND! See? Pond, Jane Pond!”
• The Doctor has told River he loves her.
• There is a set of coordinates written in River’s diary in her own blood, because she only had a moment to write them down and at least one world’s existence depended on her being in that place at that time.
Mels Zucker had screaming nightmares after reading Alice in Wonderland. She’d liked the silly things (the mad hatter guiding Alice with love and a foggy grip on reality both made her smile and made her stomach twist as she remembered her caretaker in that fuzzy way all her memories were before the age of eight.). She’d liked the somewhat scary things (never would she admit how much she identified with the Queen, too dangerous to those around her, ostracized, but capable of protecting those she loved, the so called “different” and willing to do whatever it took to keep them safe and happy. A strangled hollow breath was her only reaction when Mels saw they didn’t really love the Queen back, not a one of them. Fear always beat compassion. Even between the closest family, she wasn’t worth really loving.). Mels had even liked the very scary things (she wasn’t as limited as Alice, she could believe in way more than three impossible things. One: Melody Pond would kill the Doctor. Ha and so there!). On the whole, Mels had loved Alice in Wonderland. But in her dreams a smile appeared and disappeared, an invisible cat haunted her in her sleep. She could never remember seeing him, but she knew he was there, unseen, and she woke up screaming and shivering in terror.
• When Strax and River end up in fights together, they compete and compare scores mid combat, because Mels had secretly loved Lord of the Rings and Strax had taken to the notion like a duck to water.
• From the Library, between short adventure-breaks in haunting her husband, Professor Song arranged to teach online courses and even remotely accompanied her students on digs via cameras and robot drones. It wasn’t the same, but it wasn’t bad either.
• The first fight Mels got into with Leadworth’s bullies on Amy’s behalf made her her mother’s hero. The first fight she got into on Rory’s behalf, he made her apologize for.
• When the Doctor erased himself from history he also erased the majority of River’s doctorial thesis. She never quite forgave him for that.
• Amelia and Melody gave each other their nicknames three days after they met. From the on, to everyone, they were Amy and Mels.
• The Zuckers were real people. They were not members of the Silence nor were they figures Mels made up to keep herself out of group and foster homes. They weren’t perfect, but they were kind and loving. They blamed her for every grey hair, but wouldn’t have traded that for anything. And when their daughter is 26, she goes missing. There is a police investigation but never an empty grave and the not knowing is somehow worse than anything else.
• The Doctor had regeneration energy in his 13th body when he was traveling with the Ponds, because it was River’s regeneration energy. This was the energy that started to appear when River shot “him” at Lake Silencio and that he used to heal her wrist in New York. That same body in Trenzalor no longer had regeneration energy because he had given it back to her. Post-Library.
• The Doctor actually gave River’s remaining regenerations to his daughter, Genny (Generated Anomaly).
“Excuse me, do you know where Professor Song is?”
Professor Samuels glanced up from her notes, then blinked and forced a pleasant expression onto her face as she saw the Dean peering into her office.
“I believe she left to have lunch with her husband.” The translation globe glowed beside her as it created sound waves for her words.
“Which one?” the Dean asked, frowning.
“I do not think I have met this one before.” It was difficult to keep track.
That made the Dean grin. “He might be new. That would make him the 14th, wouldn’t it?”
Professor Samuels sighed. She’d had money on Professor Song stopping at an even dozen. Marriages that larger four that had to be hell to negotiate, nevermind three times that, but she had clearly underestimated Professor Song. “It could be one of the known ones I have not met yet.”
“What was he like?”
She shrugged. “A doctor.”
They both laughed. Professor Song had both a type and a terrible time with names. Bless. A big heart though; no one doubted her love for her husbands was genuine.
“Well,” the Dean continued. “Let her know I am looking for her if you see her. Mr. Lux is interested in funding a University expedition and I’m not sure how long the offer will stay on the table.”
“Of course,” Professor Samuels inclined her head and waited for the Dean to leave before picking up her notes again; she didn’t want the guest lecturer to have any problems while she was on family leave. Ceremonies of the first born for the clan could not be interrupted for anything less than a galactic war, so Professor Samuels was covering every possibility, barring a Professor Song event, that her replacement might face while she was out.
• Tasha Lem is Melody Pond. When she said she died screaming the Doctor’s name, the word she was screaming wasn’t Doctor. The Daleks got to her just in time and she died mid-word, the second half of his name still unsaid.
• The first time Melody saw someone die, she was six. The first time she killed someone, she was seven. Aunt Kovarian had given her a gun and taken her to witness terrible things with the admonishment: you can stop this Melody. You can save them. If you don’t then what happens is your fault too. The first couple of times they pulled the trigger together, Kovarian’s fingers over hers. Melody never did notice exactly when it changed and she was the only one holding gun. She became a psychopath because causing pain, killing, was the only way she had to protect people and, for a time, it was easy for the Silence to convince her it was the violence she enjoyed.
• The Doctor is the only Timelord River ever met.
• River changes less with her regenerations than Timelords tend to; just as water shifts container and form, but never changes its nature. She does not know if this is because she is human plus or because she can simply never stray too far from who she was programmed to be.
• The Doctor was the first person Melody, newly River, had ever really hurt. Witnessing his body grow still was the worst thing she’d ever seen. She would have given everything to undo it, which was why she eventually did.
• Mel Pond and the Doctor are sometimes a homosexual couple. The Doctor has never had a female regeneration.
• River was forced to use the chameleon arch with next to no preparation and ended up on Earth in 1890s America with no exit planned and only fuzzy, fake memories to guide her. She called herself Amelia, because the name felt right, familiar in some way. And she was stuck there for years, until the fob watch she never seemed to notice she carried was broken by accident, midway over the Pacific Ocean. She very nearly wrecked the bloody plane after all.
Melody Pond never traveled in time between her escaping the Silence in 1969 and hijacking the Tardis for a ride to Berlin. Instead, she was found in Florida by future, angel displaced, versions of her parents minutes after her escape and had a fairly happy childhood for the next 11 years. Their only response to the fact that she didn’t appear to age was to switch her to homeschooling after two years, which was good, because regular school never could have kept up with her anyway. She was nineteen and still looked eight when she left home and she kept in touch with the older versions of her parents until they died, but rarely visited, despite the fact that they worried. There were plenty of bad things that could happen to someone who looked eight wandering the world by themselves and Melody went out of her way to happen to them instead (she only had to regenerate once and getting sick didn’t count). Younger-on-the-outside Melody was probably the impetuous behind the resurgence of vampire literature that featured vampires turned as children as well as the stories of vampires that had grown an odd sort of conscious, still reveling in violence and bloodshed, but only unleashing themselves against people who were monsters in turn. Shortly after her regeneration, the younger versions of her parents were born and it was time for Melody to start calling herself Mels, age, and protect them from the Doctor as best she could while still preserving the timeline. But, for a while, Amy had been right: Melody Pond had been a superhero.
• When the Doctor gives River his screw driver, he also makes sure it will capture an imprint from when Donna was saved into the Library as well. One Donna will become the most important woman in the universe and forget, but another Donna, one who remembers the Doctor, is saved with River and her students.
• Luna University knows River is a Timelord and all of her regenerations (post receiving her position) are included in her tenure.
• The Doctor tells Amy and Rory how River dies.
Amelia rested her chin on her palm and sighed as she watched the raggedy doctor leave for a second time. Years and years were an awfully long time to wait. And the house was really empty.
The wind was getting cold and she pulled her coat tighter together, huddling up on her seat on her suitcase as much as she could. Maybe the Doctor would changed his mind and come back.
Amelia’s eyes opened again when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She very nearly shouted, but she bit her tongue at the last minute. She wasn’t a baby. She could see the white parts of the eyes of a person not much bigger than herself, but it was too dark to see any details.
“Why are you sleeping outside?” a girl’s voice asked.
“I’m waiting for the Doctor to come back. And my aunt hasn’t come home yet either.”
“You’ll get sick.”
“Will not,” Amelia stuck her jaw out stubbornly.
“Make sure you tell the germs that.” Amelia could see white teeth as the girl smiled. She didn’t sound mean, she sounded friendly, so Amelia smiled back, tentatively. “I might get sick too,” the girl added. “I’m cold. Aren’t you?”
Amelia shivered. “Yeah,” she said, reluctantly.
“Come on,” the girl tugged her arm, helping Amelia stand. Then she picked up Amelia’s suitcase in one hand, even though it was really heavy, and started to pull Amelia towards the door.
“But,” Amelia frowned, pulling back. “This is my house.”
“I don’t have a house,” the girl said. “And it’s really cold. Please?”
Amelia felt bad as she started forward again. “I’m sorry,” she told the girl. “I don’t have parents,” she added, trying to make the girl feel better. Amelia didn’t have any family at all. Did she?
“I didn’t have mine for a long time.” The girl gripped Amelia’s arm tighter for a moment, her words sounding thick.
“What happened?”
“Bad stuff. Hey,” the girls tone changed, suddenly brighter. “I’m Melody.”
“I’m Amelia.”
“Hi Amelia.” They reached the door and Melody let Amelia’s arm go to reach up for the handle. “Do we need a key?”
“S’open.”
Melody opened the door and they both blinked at the bright light that streamed out. The kitchen was still a mess and Amelia sighed deeply before heading over to clean up.
“I’ll help you,” Melody promised, setting Amelia’s suitcase by the door. Her skin was dark and Amelia stared for a moment. Melody also had a bag slung over her shoulder and she set it beside Amelia’s suitcase. “I just need to have a quick word with somebody first.”
Amelia wrinkled her nose. “Who?” she asked suspiciously.
Melody grinned, but didn’t answer. “I’ll be real fast,” she said, instead. “Please?”
Amelia sighed. She liked her sigh. It sounded very put upon.
Melody grinned and trotted out of the room. A moment later, Amelia heard her feet on the stairs. She pulled a chair over by the sink to stand on and started to scrap congealed custard out of a bowl.
...
Melody pulled a gun, the smallest hand gun she had been able to find, out of the hidden holster she had strapped to her leg. She was wearing baggy overalls and had cut out the inside of one of the pockets to reach it, so she’s been able to keep it reasonably well hidden. And even if people had seen a slight bulge, their first thought would have been frog, not gun. Nobody ever thought to frisk a kid for weapons.
Melody reached the top of the stairs and turned around. Then very carefully looked out of the corner of her eye. Spinning, she grabbed the knob and opened the door before it could vanish. The instructions about how she could do this had been very specific, but they’d left the details of the negotiation up to her. Melody walked into the room, flicking the safety off the gun, but keeping it pointed to the floor.
“I’m not a bounty hunter and I’m not planning to turn you in,” she told the room quietly, so Amelia wouldn’t overhear if she came up stairs too. “My name is Melody, you are known as Prisoner Zero, and I think we can help each other.”
“You have my attention,” a voice hissed. “How can we help each other, little human? How do you know so much?”
“I’m not a human,” Melody smirked. “I’m with the Silence. The man who closed the crack you escaped through will come back. His name is the Doctor and he knows a secret he can not be permitted to tell. They sent me to take care of it, and, if I need to, I can take care of you as well. I’m hoping that won’t be necessary. Of course, if you do manage to kill me, others will come; we know you are here and we will never stop. But we can also protect you, make sure your hunters never find you. Or make sure they do.”
“I have heard of the Silence. A cult.”
“With many members and powerful allies across all of time and space. We are devoted to killing the Doctor before he can answer the question. Silence will fall” Melody nearly rolled her eyes as she said the mantra. That stupid thing was why people though of the Church as a cult. “When the question is asked. We have no interest in local laws and no interest in you.” The was a flicker of motion in the corner of her eye. Melody marked it, but didn’t turn around.
“And in exchange for protecting me?” Prisoner Zero hissed.
“The Doctor promised the girl he would come back. You will not harm her nor any human. And you will stay here, in this town.”
“With you as my warden?”
“Your protector. If you leave, they will find you. You knew when you ran that you would have to go to ground. I just need my people and my mission safe. You want to leave the planet, I’ll help you find a ship. You want to hide here, you stay where I can make sure you won’t jeopardize either of those things. If you do, I won’t just kill you and, frankly,” my dear, Melody added in her head. “Letting them find you is a better option than crossing me.” She whipped the gun up without looking and pointed it square at Prisoner Zero, an inch from the sneak’s face, her finger firm on the trigger. “Do we have a deal?”
It had a lot of teeth. “We have a deal.”
Melody nodded, lowered her gun, and walked out of the room. “I hope you like fish fingers and custard,” she said over her shoulder as she shut the door.
Back in the hall, she slid the pistol back into its holster through the hole in her pocket and rubbed her palms against her thighs. She really really really hoped that had worked. Melody would regenerate if it tried to eat her, but Amy’s life depended on it. And Melody wasn’t sure how much a bullet would actually stop that thing.
Taking a breath, she went back to the kitchen to help her mum clean up after the person who had left a defenseless child alone in her house with an escaped convict. Her jaw clenched, teeth grinding. A defenseless child who was her mum.
Melody forced herself to exhale. Her Mum.
By the time Melody got to the bottom step, she was smiling. And her knees were only shaking a little.
Mels remembers “growing up” with Amy and Rory in Leadsworth twice, both times she was really much older than they were. The first time Mels took over raising her own mother because Amelia Pond did not have anyone to look out for her; no parents, not even an aunt. Mels knew how to keep them out of the system and enough to get them by; she also knew enough about other things to not go too close to the crack in Amelia’s wall. The second time she remembers, Amelia lived with her parents and her aunt and they disapproved of Mels enough that she and Amy never became particularly close. In that reality, Amy did not even invite Mels to Amy and Rory’s wedding. Post-wedding, Mels and her parents were much closer friends in their own memories than they were in the past everyone else remembered. And Amy’s memories of their friendship were strong enough that she was insulted Mels didn’t come to the wedding, forgetting the lack of invitation. Of course, Mels would have come regardless if she hadn’t known the Doctor would a) be there and b) she would have to allow him to haul her parents off into life threatening situations. It was safer for everyone (sadly, even the Doctor) if Mels stayed far far away. Time could be rewritten and writing herself out of existence was only half the danger. Just because Amy and Rory had survived the Doctor once did not mean that that could not be rewritten too. The universe did not need to be rebooted a third time. Really, the Doctor was a menace and the sooner baby Melody was born, the sooner Mels could stop him for good.
Amy carefully brought a mug of tea over to Rory through the mostly dark living room. “We could light a candle, stupid face. Turn on a lamp.”
He shrugged.
The fire light flickered and glinted off his sword in a fairly hypnotic fashion and it did set an appropriately barbaric atmosphere, so she didn’t push it. Despite all that he had faced down in their years with the Doctor, Rory needed all the help he could get looking intimidating to the eyes of strangers. Trust me, I’ll help, I’m a nurse, would you like my kidney was the expression etched into his essence. She set the teacup on the table and let him work. “We got another letter from Melody,” she told him.
“I saw.”
“We live in the same city and she barely visits.”
“We live in Brookland and she’s in her twenties. She wants to try living on her own for a little while.”
“How long do you think it will be...” Amy didn’t finish the question.
“She’ll be alright.” Rory told her. And Amy knew she would be, until she wasn’t. I haven’t done that since I regenerated into a toddler, River had told them long ago, before she knew about spoilers. “Besides,” Rory continued. “We have our other child to worry about tonight.”
Amy laughed. “Bringing home a girlfriend for this first time isn’t exactly the same as wandering the alleys of New York looking for trouble. And don’t tell me she doesn’t go looking.”
“She’s your, our daughter,” Rory corrected himself when she mimed punching his shoulder.
“They are a perfect couple aren’t they,” Amy said. Rory made a face. “Be nice. Anthony’s only fourteen and no one he brings home for dinner could possible compare to... Mels’ future person. He’s still a boy; this isn’t that serious. Remember puppy love?”
“I was serious about you in grade school.”
Amy smiled and would have kissed him if he hadn’t been running a whetstone along the edge of a very sharp, not-decorative sword. “Fine. Be all ‘I’m the papa and don’t mind going back to prison for my baby.’”
“We broke out of a few of those in our day.”
Amy mimed punching him again. “Hey! Remember the pl- the place that kept people in what looked like empty fishbowls in the middle of town square? Bright yellow uniforms with off-yellow splotches?”
A key rattled in the door. Amy and Rory had both smoothed the humor from that memory off of their faces by the time it opened.
“Mum? Dad?”
“Anthony,” Amy smiled and walked over to greet them as Anthony ushered a brown haired girl inside. Rory stayed over by the fireplace, resting the sword on the table where it was very obvious. “Who’s this then?”
Anthony cleared his throat nervously, subtly looking to see if his sister was around even though she rarely was these days. They had to be careful who saw her. “Helen, these are my parents, Amy and Rory Williams. Mum, Dad this is Helen Zucker.”
Amy met Rory’s startled glance. He set the sword aside. She looked back at the girl. “Hello Helen,” Amy said as she held out her hand, her voice sounded a touch faint to her own ears. “It’s nice to meet you.”
When River dies in the Library, she doesn’t leave a body or a grave, she leaves a scar. A scar of her whole time stream, every world, every moment of her life throughout her travels across time and space. And, just like the Great Intelligence and Clara did with the Doctor’s life, the Vasta Nerada entered that scar and followed the River to their forests. They are in the Library because they exist on nearly every planet across time and space and they exist on nearly every planet across time and space because they were in the Library.
• The Doctor did not rescue River from the library, the Silence did.
• In the language of the Forest People, doctor has come to mean warrior. Later, riversong becomes blackwidow and entomologists spend 330 years terribly confused about the correlation between water, music, and spiders. After that, it is simply an accepted, odd little fact.
• The Daleks also have a name for River Song: they call her the apex predator.
• River Song killed Rassilon himself.
• Humanity’s energy crisis is solved in the 22nd century by harnessing the kinetic energy of Madam Kovarian spinning in her grave.
• While she is a student at Luna U, River stays linear, but she wears a Vortex manipulator around her wrist so that she always has the option to escape.
• Tasha Lem told the Doctor the truth, she had no interest in changing history. However, the Dalek’s did and they converted many members of the Church into Dalek servants during the assault that killed Tasha Lem. Those coverted Daleks included Novice Kovarian and many of the genetically engineered Confessional Priests.
• In the Library, River read and reread a lot of things. But, out of everything, even her journal, the words River read over and over were three lines from a short poem by Robert Frost: These woods are lovely, dark, and deep / but I have promises to keep / and miles to go before I sleep
• Melody Pond has had 13 husbands and she has murdered them all
• She has one husband and she let him live
• Regeneration is not the same as being remade.