Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Cake! It’s definitely time for Amy’s cake” the Doctor clapped his hands together and stood up from the picnic blanket, brushing sand from his trousers.

He looked down at the three of them, this odd little family that had become or would become or maybe was becoming his odd little family. They were all lying in comfortable silence gazing into the glowing embers of what they all agreed had been a really spectacular bonfire. They’d built it from Andulian driftwood, after all. Even now little sparkly wisps of purple light occasionally drifted lazily up into the night sky, as Rory, Amy and River watched sleepily. Mountains of plates and glasses were piled haphazardly into the picnic basket that River had carefully packed earlier that evening.

He smiled fondly remembering how she’d come into his kitchen, over his loud protests and casually kissed his flour-dusted cheek. She’d surveyed the wreckage and selected an entire roast duck, two potato pies, a loaf of crusty bread, a green salad and four bottles of champagne, which she’d eased into a deceptively small basket. She’d looked up at him and smiled mischievously. She loved to surprise him, his River.

His River, his family?  He let himself turn the idea over in his mind, let himself believe in it for just this moment. He felt it sometimes, that feeling of belonging to these people.

He’d felt it earlier watching as River had handed Amy a wrapped parcel. He’d noticed how she’d bit her bottom lip slightly like a worried child as Amy had unwrapped it to reveal a journal, bound in tardis-blue leather.

“It can all get a little confusing,” River had explained softly “It’s always helped me to write it all out, come back to it later. The past always looks different in the light of the present.”

He’d recognized his own longing in River’s eyes as she watched Amy with the gift, as she begged her mother to understand, to accept. Amy had pulled her into a hug, and then Rory and the Doctor had piled in. Group hugs were splendid.

Now, as he walked toward the tardis doors he could hear Amy and River laughing at some joke of Rory’s and he smiled to himself. A month of fruitless searching for Melody - maybe they’d found her after all.

A crackle of electricity fizzled in the air and then someone materialized almost on top of him. He had just a moment to register that this someone was a young woman before she gasped loudly and crumpled downward. He staggered forward to catch her and lay her gently on the sand. She looked around in confusion, green eyes flicking desperately from side to side as if looking for the source of an attack. Then, she looked into his face. She exhaled, “oh thank god, you’re safe” and sagged in relief.

River, Rory and Amy pounded across the beach to join him.

“Doctor look,” Amy pointed. He looked down to see his own hands red and sticky where he had briefly grasped the strange woman as she’d fallen. Rory was already examining an oozing hole in her side. “She’s hurt….rather badly.”

“She’s been hit with a randomizing neutrino blaster,” River said evenly, kneeling beside the young woman and taking her head onto her lap. Rory jumped up and ran into the tardis with Amy close on his heels, “I’m getting the med-kit”, he yelled over his shoulder.

The Doctor looked across the woman’s unconscious form as River checked her vital signs and quickly removed a vortex manipulator from her wrist.

“Where would she get that”, he wondered aloud, “and how did she get here, exactly here, we’re on a deserted island in the middle of the Adulian sea, on a planet at the extreme boring edge of the universe, why come here, unless she was knew…this doesn’t seem like an accident.”

“It’s not.” River agreed quietly. She was about to say more when the woman’s eyes flew open.

“Who are you” she demanded, grabbing River’s wrist and twisting it with a quick move.

River didn’t flinch.  “It’s OK,” she told the young woman calmly. “I’m River Song and this is the Doctor. Our friends Rory and Amy are here too. They are going to help you.” River glanced up at the Doctor and seemed to consider something for a moment before adding: “None of them have ever met you before, do you understand?” The woman nodded with a dazed expression and let go of River’s wrist.

 “You’re River Song?” she said shakily. “You really are, I can tell… fantastic hair.” The woman’s lips curled up in a tired, but unmistakably mischievous grin as her eyes flicked over to the Doctor.  “Just imagine the possibilities.”

Her smile immediately disappeared as she seemed to process something “No, River. No!” she said urgently, struggling to sit up. “You have to send me back. He’ll never make it out, we were surrounded.” She was sobbing now, her words choked by pain and shock, “You’ve got to send me back.”

“You’ve been badly wounded,” said the Doctor carefully. “You’re not going to be able to go back for your friend for a while.”

She ignored him and turned pleadingly towards River. “It’s the Assurian guard, the entire Assurian guard. River, you know I have to be there.”

“Yes, you do.” River agreed sadly, strapping the vortex manipulator to her wrist. “But I’m afraid this time you’re going to have to take the long road.”

As the Doctor watched a long complicated look passed between them. The younger woman fell back on the sand looking pale and exhausted. She was losing strength and he had to strain to hear her last words over the crashing surf. “At least tell me if he survives, I know that you know.”

“He’ll make it, I promise.” River said simply.

“Spoilers”, the woman said with a last brave attempt at a smile before fading back in unconsciousness.

“Just this once,” River smiled and surprised the Doctor by pressing her lips tenderly to the young woman’s forehead. Then she jumped up and started punching coordinates into the vortex manipulator.

“What is going on here? And what the hell are you doing?” He demanded.

“Keeping the promise I just made her.”

“Oh no you don’t!” the doctor shouted. “You already promised me. You promised Amy. You can not just leave.” He could feel a strange pressure in his chest. He needed her. How could she even think of leaving on the errand of some mysterious stranger?

“I did promise you, my love.” River said calmly. Too calmly. How could she be so calm? It was maddening the way she cupped his cheek in her hand and looked at him with her sad eyes. “I promised I’d stay until you found me,” at this she inclined her head to the injured woman, “and so now I have to go.”

He looked back at the woman lying too still a few feet behind them as the meaning of her words unfolded in his mind. Rory and Amy returned and Rory was tending to the woman’s wounds with quick but steady hands as Amy handed him instruments.

“I thought you’d be younger.” He followed River as she backed closer to the water – muttering calculations to herself and fidgeting with the vortex manipulator.

“I’m nearly 100 years younger.” River smirked.

Suddenly the Doctor felt his attention sharpen to a laser focus. Of course, he was so stupid, she was much older than she looked! She wasn’t just from his future, she was from all of his future, this River would watch his death just as he had helplessly watched hers. Just how much time did they both have?

 “River how old are you?”

“What a question!” – She exclaimed, pretending to be offended as she finished punching in her coordinates. Then, unexpectedly, she leaned over and kissed him.

His mind was suddenly full of the sensation of her lips moving against his. He kissed her back without restraint. He ran one hand into the tangle of her curls. His River. Now that she was going he had to tell her. He had to tell her what he’d been too afraid to say on that stolen night when he’d followed her soundlessly into the library and locked the door behind them. She moved against him now and he flashed back to that night, the feel of her under his hands, the steady beating of her heart afterwards as he slept dreamless against her bare chest.

“No! I don’t want you to.” He pulled away and looked at her, blinking back stinging tears. He had to tell her. “River, I…”

“I know.” She said squeezing both his hands in hers. “My love, I know, but I do have to go.” For a moment he saw fear flash across her face before it settled again into the familiar mask of calm resolve. “Tell her, she’s having a really terrible day.”

And with that he was standing alone.

He was fighting back tears as Amy pulled him to where Rory was working, now somewhat frantically, over the young woman. He looked up when he saw them approaching. “Her pulse is racing, her breathing is erratic and she’s burning up.”

The doctor kneeled in the sand and considered the young woman. She was very pale, as pale as Amy although maybe that was blood loss. Her long blonde hair was matted with dirt and blood. She was dressed for a fight in what looked like 51^st century combat fatigues. A broken perception filter was clamped to her belt along with a small arsenal of micro explosives. What had they been doing? Although, he supposed it was arrogant to assume the “he” River had gone to bail out of this horrible battle was his future self.

Rory had patched her up. He noted the medical implements lying scattered around. Rory had known how to treat a wound from a neutrino blaster. How had he known that? The Doctor gently placed his hand against the woman’s neck, she was searing to the touch but her pulse beat a strong four beat staccato against his fingers. He pulled his hand away in surprise. Two hearts?

Rory was kneeling across from the doctor, holding the young woman’s wrist and looking at his watch with a concerned expression.

“Rory, how did you know what to do? That’s a very specific injury.”

Rory looked confused for a moment and then he said slowly, “River’s been teaching me.” He turned his attention back to his patient, “But I’m not really sure it worked.”

“She’ll be fine, Rory. Her pulse seems fast to you because; well she isn’t really human, not all the way.”

Amy broke in, “Doctor, what are you saying? Who is this person? And where is River?”

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. She had to go, Amy.”

He looked up at her. Tears were streaming down her face. His poor Amy, her daughter lost again.

“Why?” the question held a note of accusation, but the Doctor ignored it. His mind was focused again on the woman on the sand. Rory had unbuttoned her shirt to clean her wound. He could see three silvery scars slashed across the skin of her belly. His eyes traveled upwards, she was wearing a dainty pink lace bra and pale rounded breasts rose and fell quickly with her shallow, panting breaths. He needed to get her into the med-bay, clean her up so she could rest.

“I’m not completely sure, but I hope she went to save me, it would be quite a blow to the ego if she ran off to rescue some other dodgy guy.” He said offhandedly, sliding his arms under the woman and hefting her up. “But,” he grunted, adjusting his posture to carry her into the tardis, “there really shouldn’t be two of her in one place, not for long at least, might make the whole of time and space go a bit off.”

Chapter Text

An hour later they were all sitting in the med-bay eating Amy’s cake. At Rory’s insistence Amy was sipping a cup of tea into which he had poured a liberal shot of Irish whisky.

“So, that’s River too?” she said indicating the young woman sleeping in the med-bay’s only bed.

“A new River, well new to us, well I guess from our River’s perspective this is old River, although she’s considerably younger,” rambled the Doctor. He abruptly stopped talking and sipped at his tea instead.

“But she’s completely different; she doesn’t look anything like River.” Rory was leaning over the sleeping figure, “Although she does actually look a bit like my Aunt Deirdre.”

Amy ignored him and addressed the Doctor, “But you said she has two hearts. River didn’t and neither did Melody.” Amy was standing up somewhat shakily.

“No, no they didn’t”, the Doctor agreed kindly. He took a deep breath. “Remember when I told you that I didn’t get older, I just changed?”

Amy blushed remembering just when he had told her. “So you’re saying my daughter can do that? She just changed, regenerated, went all gold and gushing light?”

“Yes, and it would make sense that the time lord part of her DNA could be expressed differently with each…” the Doctor trailed off. When had he ever described what regeneration looked like to Amy?

But he couldn’t think about that now. An important piece of his personal puzzle had just dropped into place. Clearly, the River he’d known had regenerated at least twice. He felt a swell of anger at himself. He’d been an idiot to get emotionally entangled with River. Obviously, she was going to get hurt. If she’d needed to regenerate then she’d been in desperate trouble, she’d died. And today she’d appeared, gravely wounded and in some trouble bad enough to scare his favorite archaeologist. What else would he fail to protect her from? Stupid question, really, he knew exactly how he would fail her, in the end.

“I met her once, you know, before I looked like this…she knew me immediately.” And then she died, he thought.

Rory exchanged a look of fellow feeling with the Doctor. “Come on Amy, let’s call it a night.”

Amy walked towards the door, but turned back to him, hesitantly, “Will she be OK?” Amy asked.

He stood up and folded her into a hug. This is why he loved people, such an endless capacity to care.

“She’s healing, it’s a base metabolistic state that timelords and I guess timelordish humans move into when they’ve been hurt. All we have to do is let her sleep it off and she’ll be right as rain. I’ll stay with her, you get some rest.”

He watched the two of them leave, worry written on their faces. He knew how they felt; he’d been a parent once after all.

He sat down next to her bed and took her hand in his. Her hand felt small inside his own as he pressed his lips to her long fingers.

 “I’m so sorry.”

He must have fallen asleep because when he opened his eyes Gallifrey was burning. It was a mercy he didn’t sleep often as this was the memory that always came unbidden into his dreams. His home burned. In the strange way of dreams he hung in space, unprotected, watching as everyone and everything he ever loved was lost to the fire.

“So, are we doing this again?” asked a soft chorus of voices at his side.

He turned and she was there, floating lightly in space beside him.  It was the woman sleeping in his med-bay back on the tardis and it was his River and less distinctly she was also a young girl and a woman he had never met and maybe there were other faces reaching back into the stars. As he struggled to focus on her she blurred and distorted and seemed to wear all their faces at once. It was like looking through a carefully faceted gem-stone.

“Sweetie, settle on an aspect, you are giving me a headache and I’m barely strong enough to project here.”

She spoke in proper River’s voice so that’s how he chose to see her and then suddenly that’s who she was - all curves and springy hair with a smile in her eyes.

The Doctor accepted this new development even though he should be astounded; telepathy into dream space took strength, real power, even for a pure time-lord. River had never once in all the times he’d met her even hinted that she could do this.

“I probably couldn’t,” his dream River said taking his hand. “I’m different every time, just like you. Sometimes my timelord gifts are more…” she paused to search for a word “obvious.”

“River, how, how” he stammered, “how did you get this deep inside my head?”

She let go of his hand and floated through the glittering star-strewn sky. She looked worriedly at him, “Don’t you know?”

“I know.” She’d whispered it into his ear the first time he met her. She held the key to all the rooms of his soul. He wondered if he’d spoken that word of power to this new River, who could walk across the space of his dreams to stand face to face with the unchanging part of him, the part that bore that name.

She’d changed again. Now, she was the young woman in his med-bay. Her long golden hair was floating like a halo around her face. She had long, willowy limbs and delicate features, like Amy, he thought. He reached for her hand again and they looked together for a long while at the burning planet.

River took a deep breath and spoke very kindly and carefully, “I’m not afraid to face what you did, what you had to do. You can’t scare me with this; believe me, you’ve tried.”

“How can you not hate me? You should hate me for what I did to them; what I do to the people who love me.”

He turned to look at her and felt her reach even further into him. It’s OK you can show me if you need to.  He felt a place inside him unhinge and creak open. They both watched as all he had loved, the beauty of the red plains, and the faces of his children - all of it turned sour then burned away until all that remained was pain and guilt, unfolding endlessly like plumes of foul, black smoke against the glittering night sky.

Then other, more recent losses: Rose, Donna their faces flashed past in waves of pain and sorrow. She held his hand tightly through it all. Then it was Amy’s face, weeping for her lost baby. Amy it’s not his fault.

 River turned to him. “No, you can’t let me see this,” she was trying to twist away. The Doctor struggled to get control of his emotions to throw up a wall around the memories she shouldn’t see. One last wrenching vision of River herself, eyes full of hurt. I love a bad girl, me. But, trust you, seriously? His own voice echoed scornfully across the sky. And then, all was quiet.

He woke with a jerk.  Amy was calling him frantically from the control room. He felt River’s mind turn away from him retreating into sleep, leaving the thinnest thread of connection between them. He groggily wiped his hand across his face and found it was slick with tears.

“Do you see now why you should hate me?” he asked her sleeping form before striding out of the room.

Chapter Text

The control room was a riot of flashing lights.

“I told you never touch anything!” the Doctor yelled coming into the room and rushing to the scanner.

“I didn’t!” Amy insisted.

“Ahhh, it’s the capacitor, we’ve been in the vortex too long. She needs to stabilize. I’ll just land somewhere safe, somewhere nothing ever happens…how about Leadsworth?”

“You’re taking us home?” Before Amy could finish her question the doctor strode to the doors and flung them open. “Well no, I mean I …” he trailed off as he turned to see a motley collection of mud huts in a small forest clearing.

“This is Leadsworth? The place has really gone to seed.” Rory deadpanned, joining him at the door.

“I seem to have arrived a bit earlier than I intended, never mind – any port in a storm, we just need to wait a half hour for the tardis’s auto-relative shift capacitors to gear down.”

“This is Leadsworth, but when?” asked Amy moving to the scanner. “1250. Doctor you have literally brought us to the Dark Ages.”

“Fascinating, shall we have a look around then?” the Doctor asked.

It was decided that even if it was the Dark Ages they likely had something to eat somewhere in the little village. The smell of baking bread was rising gently in the dawn air. The three of them trudged down a gently sloping hill towards the market square.

“Lovely morning, what could possibly go wrong?” chirped the Doctor.”

Rory stopped walking and turned to face him. “Seriously, don’t say that.”

- - - - - -

Hours later, the three of them were shackled in a dark, gritty cell as a pair of short, stout aliens that looked for all the world like a goblins from a book of children’s fairy tales argued about what to do with them.

“Sell them or eat them, I don’t care.” The monster nearest the doctor was gesticulating his lack of interest with a sharp looking spear. Saliva dripped from its fangy mouth as it spoke.

“I do tend to have an opinion on that, personally I’m against both alternatives” Amy said.

As both guards turned their attention to Amy the Doctor started to work on the primitive shackles that bound him with a small pin.

The guard noticed his activity and cruelly jabbed his spear into the Doctor’s shoulder. As the pain seared through him, the Doctor felt River jerk awake. The connection between them was suddenly bright and alive, vibrating with the force of her rage.

He started to chuckle, raising his head to look the monster in the eyes. “Oh you really shouldn’t have done that.” He could feel her, she was coming fast and the intensity of her anger and fear almost overtook him.”

“Run. Get out, now.” He barked at the alien that looked like a goblin. “Leave the children untouched and never bother these people again.”

“You are in no position to make demands.”

“I’m giving you a chance to live”, the doctor bellowed. “You’ve just made a very serious mistake and I’m not going to be able to stop what’s about to happen to you. Trust me, if you value your life, if you have any interest whatsoever in your continued existence go now!”

“What mistake?” sneered the creature, rotating his spear so that it tore painfully against the doctor’s flesh.

“You woke up River,” he said coldly.

As the Doctor spoke, a figure stepped into being behind the creature and silently closed an invisible door. A ancient, Roman sword flashed and his captor’s head landed with a sickening thud on the floor.

“I did try to warn you,” the Doctor said with a grimace.

The second goblin-creature advanced toward her, but she sidestepped him swinging her blade up through his spear arm and then kicked him hard in the chest. He staggered back and slumped against the wall cradling his stump of an arm and moaning.

River dropped to her knees in front of the Doctor her eyes assessing his injuries. She set one palm firmly on his breastbone and before he could protest, removed the spear from his shoulder in one sure motion.

“Aaarggghh, that really hurt!”

“Hi honey, nice handcuffs” She raised her eyebrows at him suggestively as she pushed his jacket open.

“Umm, standing right here.” Rory called.

River liberated the sonic from his inside coat pocket and then promptly walked away from the Doctor to where Amy and Rory stood shackled to the far wall.

“So, what did I miss?” she asked with an air of forced lightness, taking in the dank, dungeon-like room as she freed them from the restraints and hugged them both in turn

“Well there were some peasants with missing children. And some old wise woman told us really creepy fairy tales that turned out to be true about goblin men luring children in the forest with faerie lights. Well only sort of true, turns out goblins are aliens that traffic in child slavery and faerie lights are floating mind-control orbs.” Rory summarized, rubbing his wrists.

“Hmm” said River toeing the goblin-like creature who was still whimpering over his arm, “looks Gradulian to me, probably just caste outcasts, what do you think sweetie?”

“Yes, definitely Gradulian”, he had to twist against the restraints to turn towards her. “They’re shipwrecked and thought they’d sell a village full of children in exchange for a tow. Really unpleasant lot. Aren’t you going to set me free?”

“No, not just yet,” She said dangerously, turning her attention to the wounded guard. “The children you took, take us to them,” she demanded. When he didn’t answer immediately, she kicked him hard with the toe of her boot. “Don’t imagine that playing games with me is wise.”

The Gradulian sneered up at her. “They are ours, they followed our lights, and there will be a good price for them. Kill me if you want, my clan will destroy you.”

“Who said anything about killing you?” River asked coolly. The Doctor could feel her pushing against this creature’s mind grappling with his consciousness for control. “You’re going to help us.”

She was on the verge of losing control and destroying him. “River, be careful,” he warned her. “Psychic manipulation is very tricky across species. You could blow a hole in his head.”

“He was going to do much, much worse to you,” she was talking in a low, deadly voice. “I can see it here in his filthy little mind.” She leaned down and raked her hand across the side of the goblin’s temple. “He’s worse than the others. He enjoys it. He took children from their cradles. He took them from their mothers’ arms…he, he.” Her voice broke off. He tried to catch her gaze but her eyes were glazed over, seeing untold horrors through this monster’s eyes. A trickle of blood was starting to run from the creature’s nose.

“River.” he said quietly both out loud and in her mind. “River, It won’t make you feel any better, trust me. I know.” The goblin was starting to convulse.

She turned with a great effort to meet his eyes and nodded slightly, her own eyes black and strange. He felt her struggle to the surface of her anger. With a long exhale she released the creature’s mind and sagged back against the wall, breathing raggedly. Amy rushed to her side.

The Doctor turned to the Gradulian who was now looking dazed. “I can help you get off this planet if you’ll just let those children go. This doesn’t have to end in more bloodshed.”

“Leave?” the creature shook his head. “Never!” As he spoke a loud rhythmic thumping sounded from down the damp corridor. “Hear! They come, to rip and tear and rend.”

“River,” the Doctor called urgently, “I think you should free me now.”

“Yes, perhaps I’d better.” She said aiming his screwdriver at his cuffs. They clicked open just as an angry horde of Gradulians swarmed into the room.

“Release our chieftain!”

“Oh, you’re the leader, why didn’t you say so?” River asked the one-armed alien briskly pulling him up, grabbing him roughly by the collar and shoving him out in front of her. “Excellent, you’ll make the perfect hostage.”

A short while later they were standing out in the sunshine - a truce, of sorts, having been established. The Doctor had hailed a Saurian ship (maybe he didn’t quite mention it was a prison ship) to take the slave traders away and Rory and Amy had taken charge of a noisy group of children who were dirty and a bit underfed but not too worse for it all.

River stood quietly behind him still gripping Rory’s sword, as the Doctor faced the Gradulian crowd, reminding them to not come back to this planet. “I don’t really do second chances,” he warned them. His sonic blipped in his pocked to alert him that the ship was in orbit and ready to take on its new passengers. “Ah, I think that’s your ride.”

The one-armed chieftain sneered triumphantly and hurled a dagger straight at the Doctor’s head. River moved faster than he could track, Rory’s sword arcing through the air to meet the dagger and send it flying back to lodge in the chieftain’s neck with a neat little crunching sound. Blood well up from the spot and the creature gasped for air and fell backwards. He lay convulsing on the spot.

“Would anyone else care to decline the Doctor’s gracious offer?” River merrily asked the alien crowd, who, as one, took a step backwards.

“You enjoyed that!” the Doctor snapped.

“You’ve got to admit, that was fairly bad-ass,” Rory called.

The Doctor scowled, taking a com-link from her pocket, “You can transport them now,” she said to the waiting ship.

Chapter Text

By nightfall they were all sitting around a rough-hewn wooden table, heavy with roast ducks and fresh loaves of bread. The village was alive again with the sounds of laughing children. Everyone was dancing to pipes and drums; Rory took Amy’s hand and they twirled around with the crowd, laughing and stomping.

River was staring blankly off into the woods, all the adrenaline of the rescue drained from her. She looked pale and thin, her shoulders tensed slightly. The Doctor watched her from across the table as she pushed a strand of her straight golden hair behind her ear. He noticed her hands were shaking a little. It was so unimaginable that she was like this, so like him. He wasn’t sure he liked her this way. Damned if he didn’t miss the real River. Like this she was incredibly strong and fast, but so much more fragile and dangerous. She was just young, he reminded himself, and he’d upset her.

He reached out to brush her mind with his and was immediately sorry. She was thinking about the memory he never should have let her see, brooding on her future, a future in which he doesn’t know her, doesn’t trust her.

She felt his touch on her mind and gently pushed him back, closing the doors to her thoughts firmly. “It’s OK.” She began in a low steady voice. “It’s just that I’ve never been very far back in your timeline. I’m so thick. That’s what’s coming for me, and of course, that’s what’s going to happen, but I just never let myself imagine it. Not properly…” Her voice broke and he could hear her fighting back tears. “I’m sorry; I’m being stupid. That’s a long way in your past and a long way off in my future.” She tried to smile bravely.

Not so very long in my past at all, he was thinking. This time he took care to keep that thought quietly to himself.

One of the village children they had saved, a girl of maybe four with long, dark braids, climbed into River’s lap. She held the child, rocking her back and forth. It was such on ordinary cozy sight, but it took his breath away with longing. River lay her cheek against the child’s head, turning her face so he couldn’t see her tears.

He could just hear snatches of the song she sang into the child’s ear. It was a happy song to cheer them up and chase away sad thoughts. He knew the refrain and joined in, singing with gusto until she finally met his eyes and smiled. He pulled her to her feet and the three of them danced around madly, singing at the top of their lungs. When they finished the song, he drew her into his arms and swayed with her. “I know you, I trust you, I’m not going to let any of that happen to you.” He whispered into her ear, “Time can be rewritten.”

Later, when the four of them staggered back into the Tardis, she hugged her parents goodnight with a murmured “night Mum, night Dad” and set off down an upper corridor humming to herself. Rory and Amy stood like statues looking after her.

“I don’t think she realizes how little time you’ve really known her,” the Doctor said by way of explanation. He’d heavily implied that they’d known each other for a long while. He hadn’t meant to lie. “I should probably tell her.”

“No, don’t,” Amy said softly. “Let’s just go with it.”

“Right,” the Doctor said nervously.

Hours later, when he opened the door to his bedroom, he almost tripped over River’s boots. A trail of clothing led off to the bathroom and his best robe lay on the floor next to the bed. She was asleep, blankets twisted around her as if she’d been fitfully tossing. Putting off the question of what to do with the gorgeous girl in his bed, he went into the bathroom and surveyed the damage. His favorite, fluffiest towel was a crumpled wet heap in front of the shower, a bottle of shampoo lay on its side oozing pink slippery stuff onto the floor, and someone had used the last of the toothpaste and left the empty tube on the counter.

He walked back into the bedroom to stand next to the bed where she slept.

“You’re a right slob, River Song.”

She opened one eye for a moment before rolling over. He stripped down to his boxers and shoved her lightly. “Hey, budge over. And, you can’t have the entire blanket.”

He was almost asleep, when she slid over alongside him and nestled her head against his chest. “Are you cross with me?” she asked in a very small voice.

“About the toothpaste? Yes, that was incredibly inconsiderate.”

“No, about the two dead Gradulians.” she actually sounded worried about his opinion. That was new. Stronger, he thought, but more fragile. “It’s been a long time since I lost control like that.”

“No, I’m not angry, but I’m a little afraid of you now.” He said lightly.

“Good, remember that when you discover I’ve used the last of the bubble bath.”

She raised herself up on her elbows and leaned over him, letting her hair cascade around his face. “I’m glad you’re alright.” She moved her head to kiss the angry crescent-shaped scar on his chest, where the spear had pierced his shoulder. “You heal so quickly, I bet tomorrow there won’t even be a scar.”

Her hands moved in a practiced way over his torso and her mouth moved to his neck, her lips brushing the pulse point. He gasped at the pleasure of it. River had touched him like this in the library; she’d had lifetimes to learn his body. He felt completely out of his depth. He ran his hands down her sides meeting the soft cotton of a bandage against his fingertips.

“And, you’re still hurt.” He whispered in surprise, gently moving her away from him and pushing her back down on the bed so he could get a good look at her injuries. The blaster wound was still there – it was healing but it wasn’t gone. He traced his fingers over the three long silvery slashes he’d noticed before. “These are old what happened here?”

She stiffened under his touch. “You don’t know. How can you not know?” Her eyes were searching his face.

“Tell me.” His words hung between them for a long moment.

“No, sweetie,” she kissed him chastely on the lips, tears spilling onto her cheeks. “No, If I didn’t tell you then there’s a good reason.”

He could feel the weight of her unspoken expectations; he was supposed to do something now to make everything all right again, but he froze nervously. He wouldn’t lie to her like that. Not that he didn’t want this beautiful woman who was strong and dangerous and amazing, but he just couldn’t…not until she knew where they stood.

She turned her back to him. He worked up the nerve to put an arm tentatively around her. He could feel her chest move in and out, her breath deepening as she drifted once more into sleep. He stayed awake, wary now, of dreaming.

Chapter Text

A week of traveling with them and she’d figured it out.

“You’ve known who I was a grand total of four weeks in your timeline, and you thought you’d just carry on as if everything were normal and just not mention it!” River could really scream when she was angry. Luckily, Amy and Rory were off somewhere exploring.

“River, I, um, well,” The Doctor had been standing at the kitchen counter, stirring milk into his tea, when she’d barged in ready for a fight.

“You’ve been in my bed. Every night,” she was trying hard to look affronted.

“Well I rather thought of it as your being in my bed, and besides nothing happened,” he shot back.

“I suppose that now that makes a lot more sense – there’s usually a lot less actual sleeping,” River snapped at him.

The Doctor blushed and that seemed to take the wind out of the argument for a moment. River looked at him curiously. “Um, Doctor, have we ever…I mean in your timeline?” Not satisfied just to ask out loud, he felt her search his mind for the answer.

“River, get out of my head, that’s just rude!”

“Just once,” she answered her own question and abruptly sat down at the table. “You’re just beginning to know me.” It wasn’t a question, just a statement of fact.

“Actually, I’ve known you for two years not four weeks, but it’s true that I just recently learned who you are.”

“We’re both early enough.” she said slowly. He could see comprehension dawning across her face as she looked up at him. “Time can be rewritten.” She said it as if that was the answer to a question that had long troubled her.

She stood up again and slinked toward him, speaking in a low, conspiratorial tone. “Doctor, this older me that you’ve known for two years – did she, did I, seem like I was protecting a secret future that I wanted to make sure came to pass. Did I seem willing to die even, if that’s what it took to preserve your timeline?”

The Doctor nodded, he knew he shouldn’t be telling her this but he had could tell she was building to something interesting and curiosity always seemed to overcome his good sense.

“I should have known,” she said with growing excitement. I should have known the other night when you were talking about rewriting time…older you, future you wouldn’t suggest that...” She stopped talking for a second and bit her bottom lip, nervously tugging on the hem of her shirt. “I’ve always known that he was keeping something walled off - something important from my future. A big thing that has to happen, must be something awful, right?”

She was right. Older River had always been cautious with information, holding back, so carefully. This River had kept little from him. And right now, she was flirting with the idea of letting go completely. It was exhilarating and incredibly dangerous. He could feel his hearts start to beat faster. “River, we can’t talk about this, we shouldn’t.”

She ignored him and crossed the distance between them, reaching out to lay her hands on either side of his temples. “But it’s not there now,” she murmured. “It’s in your future too.” She raked her fingernails through his hair, bringing her hands to meet behind his neck. He smiled at the sensation. Clearly breaking the rules of all of time and space turned her on. She stood on her tiptoes until her lips were just inches from his. “I think something very bad is coming for us.”

The Doctor grabbed her wrists and pulled them roughly away from him. She was being reckless with time energies; they were toeing the edge of created a paradox. It made her irresistible. He could feel the pulse of time thrumming around them, a steady whirring of heat and energy in four steady beats emanating from the woman before him. The sensation was intoxicating. He pulled her against him and bent to brush his jaw against her cheek as he whispered into her ear. “OK, let’s just assume for a moment that you’re right and a big, bad terrible thing awaits us. Just what do you want to do about it?”

It felt like they were leaning over the edge of a precipice, the threads that bound them to their timelines stretched so thin, just barely supporting them. What would it feel like to fall? River stretched against him to place her lips against his ear, fire rippled between them, electricity crackling at all the points where her long body pressed against his.

“Run away, just run.” Her voice was ragged and her fingers pulled the silk of his bow-tie free and then started to work on the first button of his shit.

He struggled to maintain control, to think rationally, but dear gods this felt good. He could feel her sincerity; she wanted to run away, far away. She was terrified. The thought sobered him a little.

The Doctor placed his hands on her upper arms and moved her a few inches further away so he could think. He couldn’t lose her again so soon. “Maybe it’s not anything so bad,” he coaxed. “Maybe all the top secret stuff was so that our timelines would continue to cross.”

River struggled to pull away from him, but he didn’t release his grip on her upper arms. “Doctor, I’ve seen you move galaxies to keep me on this timeline, I’ve seen what you’ve sacrificed. Do you really believe that our future selves have gone to all this trouble so that we don’t miss out on some great star-crossed love story? Does that seem likely to you?” She was forcing the words out angrily, but he could sense the desire under all the false bravado. She wanted him as badly as he wanted her.

The Doctor didn’t say anything for a long minute. He watched her green eyes, blazing with the intensity of her emotions. Her pale cheeks were flushed. He jerked her back towards him and kissed her for everything he was worth, walking her backwards until he had her pinned against the kitchen wall. He pressed his hips into hers and let his desire flow over her consciousness. He’d held out for so many days, but now she knew and all was fair.

“Yes, it seems incredibly likely,” he said huskily.

She shoved him backwards, panting for breath. For a minute he thought she might hit him, but then she was kissing him instead, throwing her body against his, matching his fevered pitch. They fell against something hard and he faintly registered the sound of splintering wood, before he completely lost control; rational thoughts shoved aside by something primal and ravenous. He wanted desperately to get closer, deeper, further inside her. They kissed urgently, teeth nipping against lips and skin, while fighting desperately against buttons and belts and pieces of furniture that were foolish enough to get in their way.

“We could run away together, if you want to,” River panted, when they had finally stopped kissing so that she could wrestle her t-shirt over her head. He had already been divested of his shirt and his trousers were tangled around his ankles. He took the opportunity to kick the ruddy things across the kitchen before turning his attention back to her. He swung her up and onto the countertop, sending a pitcher to shatter on the floor. She wrapped her legs tightly around his waist and pulled him into her. “I want to,” he moaned into her hair. “Oh River, I want to.”

Chapter Text

“So maybe we should go eat breakfast out somewhere?” River had returned to the kitchen and was leaning in the doorway. She was wearing a light blue sundress, having given up on salvaging what was left of her earlier outfit.

The Doctor nodded at the essential wisdom of this suggestion, thinking that it would be very pleasant to eat breakfast in Provence sometime in the pre-industrial age and then slip off to some sun-filled meadow.

“When did we break the table?”

The Doctor didn’t respond. He was grinning stupidly, already imagining the fun to be had in quiet meadows, especially if one brought along some of that fantastic lavender honey.

“What is so funny?” She slipped into his mind and blushed. “Really, Doctor! And here you’ve had me convinced you were some sort of a monk.” She paused, considering the wreckage of the kitchen, “well at least up until quite recently.”

He laughed and took her hand. They were going to run away together. They didn’t have to march blindly into some grim future like lambs to the slaughter, no more back to front. Loneliness had weighed on him until his long lives had stretched before him like a penance. He’d felt doomed to serve it, he’d felt he deserved it. But River! Oh, the miracle that was River. He would not let her go.

“Where shall we run away to first my naughty girl?”

“Provence seems as good a place as any, I think the very best years for that lavender honey were around the end of the 18th century.”

Just then Amy’s voice came echoing down the hallway, “We’re back!” The Doctor hurriedly closed the door to the kitchen and he and River walked towards the main control room, trying desperately not to look terribly guilty and failing. They arrived, red faced and bearing identical grins to see Amy and Rory dropping their bags on the floor.

“What?” Rory said immediately with an intense scowl “have you two been up to?”

“Oh Dad, I’m a hundred and three years old, I think I count as a grown-up.” She crossed the room and gave him a hug. “I promise you can be completely over-protective when I’m younger.”

River spent weeks pleading with Amy and Rory to stop looking for her. Finally, after many tearful discussions, they agreed.

Amy sat with the Doctor, turning the prayer leaf over and over in her hands. “It’s never going to not hurt, all that I’ve missed, but as long as we’re here in the Tardis, we’re all together.”

“Mum!” River’s voice echoed down the hallway as if on cue. “Mum, come here…now.” Her voice sounded strained.

“What is it?” Amy called, getting to her feet. The Doctor followed her down the hallway, but River didn’t reply. Amy shot him a worried glance and they both ran down the hall calling River’s name.

When they found her she was lying unconscious on a second level corridor. The Doctor quickly ran his sonic over her form. “Strange, she’s not in any serious danger, but her biometastatics are off the charts.”

“What does that mean?” Amy demanded. “Is she ill?”

“I don’t know what it means. She’s unique. It’s not like she came with a manual.” The Doctor was clearly agitated.

River was beginning to open her eyes. She had a nasty gash on her forehead and she raised a hand to it experimentally, she made a strained groaning sound as Amy helped her sit up.

“What happened?” Amy asked, tenderly pushing River’s hair back from her sweaty face.

River glanced at the Doctor for an instant. “Nothing, I think I just walked right into something.”

“But, you were calling me.”

The Doctor was looking back and forth between River, who was very carefully not meeting his gaze, and the readout from his earlier scan of her. Amy pulled River to her feet and they hurried away leaving him there. He took himself directly to the main control room. He fed the information from the bioscan into the main computer and began to cross reference it against the tardis’s main data core. He was still there, an hour later when Amy ran in.

“She’s gone. River’s gone.”

“Gone, what do you mean gone?”

“I mean she’s gone - she left a note, but I can’t read it.”

Amy handed him a scrap of paper on which River had scrawled in Gallifreyan, “I’m fine. Take my parents home.” She had left him coordinates and a time signature a days in the future.

He found her in exactly where she said she’d be in a deserted planetary archive. She had pulled down dozens of star charts, mostly 31st century, and spread them across the room’s massive oak table. Several tattered books of Gallifreyan calculus were propped open and River leaned over the table, cursing as she scribbled some calculations in old high Gallifreyan. He crossed the room and looked over her shoulder.

“The assumptions in these algorithms are all backwards.”

“Yes, yes they are.” She didn’t look up from the chart she was consulting.

“Your timeline vectors are very sloppy, they shouldn’t be this irregular and what’s this negative space?” He picked up one piece of parchment and considered it, creasing his brow. “Timelines can do this, but it’s just asking for a paradox or something worse.” He took her shoulders and turned her towards him forcibly, “River – this is us, these are our timelines – I’m not blind.” He shook the paper in her face. “What in the name of sanity are you planning?”

“I’m not, you’ll plan this, you planned all of it!” He realized she was upset, her voice was shaking. “It’s already happened, it’s happening, oh bugger these English very tenses.” She was crying, tears were spilling down her cheeks, the sight of her green eyes rimmed in red, simply undid him.

“Shhh, it’s OK.” He wrapped her in his arms and swayed from side to side.

“I know.” She sobbed into his chest. “I know now why you sent me to that beach. You knew, you knew this would happen, it’s a fixed point.”

“What’s a fixed point?”

“The big, scary thing that has to happen, the think we’re running from. The thing our older selves protect at all costs.”

“I thought we agreed that there was no big, scary thing – that it’s really just us we’re protecting – you and me together, time and space, star-crossed lovers and all that.” He kissed her forehead, carefully avoiding the little purplish cut.

“You really are thick, for someone so clever.” She looked up at him with an expression that was so sad, but also something more. He could feel her drawing courage from some unimaginable well, the way he’d seen older River do so many times. She was finding the strength to live their impossible story. She drew a deep breath and took both his hands in hers.

“But, I suppose you’re right in a manner of speaking.” She placed his hands on her belly. “It is us, it’s exactly you and me...together – that we’re both going to protect at all costs.”

His eyes searched her face for a long moment; he pressed his forehead to hers and reached into her mind. Is this real? The words took shape without sound, but he thought them in his own language.

“Yes.” She said simply in a language that once had borne galaxies into being.

He dropped to his knees, his arms tight around her waist, his head pressed against her, and he cried. He cried for all he had lost and found again. He cried for the unbelievable miracle that was his life with River and the tiny life they had made together. And he cried because he understood immediately what River’s charts meant. The forces of time pushed the two of them in opposite directions, even now, he could feel invisible currents rushing up between them. He braced himself against their pull.

“How much time do we have?” She understood too. They could find a quiet spot, an eddy in the river of time. The negative space was there in the algorithm, but they couldn’t hide there forever.

“I’m not sure, fifty years, maybe a little less.”

“Actually, that sounds amazing.” Her voice held so much hope.

He let himself imagine Saturday outings, bedtime stories, scraped knees mended with a kiss, and River, her green eyes lit with joy. And then, he thought sadly – we’ll have to part. We’ll have to start moving in opposite directions. River, moving always closer to the library, where she’ll give her life to set me on this timeline. And I, I have a date with an astronaut. I’ll let Melody kill me, so she can be free to grow into River. They would both fight to make sure those things would happen, because those events had happened, had to happen to lead to this. Of course, River had been right, their future selves had been fiercely protective…just like parents should be.

When he finally managed to stand up again he took her in his arms and kissed her. “You are so brilliant.”

“I actually must be a little dense, because I thought this was impossible.” She spoke the words with her lips touching his, every syllable a tiny kiss.

“It’s a big complicated universe, sometimes impossible things happen.” His hands had wandered to her belly again where they traced complicated little circular patterns against the soft stretch of her skin.
“And we call them miracles.”

Chapter Text

“I think I know where we can hide.” River was standing over the tardis’s library table nibbling a chocolate chip scone. She was trailing little bits of crumb all over a 31st century star chart. “This is where all the negative space is – it’s got to be somewhere in here.” She tapped her long fingers on a star quardrant. “The lineals fit the theory perfectly, they just sort of curve out here around this planet.”

“Astral lineals don’t curve, River.” He was lying on the library’s tufted leather sofa examining the ceiling. He’d been brooding and cross all afternoon.

“These do.” She ignored his tone. “I wonder if it’s due to this trionic star cluster – I mean that is odd, isn’t it.”

“River please marry me.”

She exhaled in exasperation; they’d been having this argument for a month. “I’ve already told you it’s not going to happen.”

“Explain it to me one more time.”

“You’ve made a disaster out of getting married. You’re terrible at it.”

“That’s unfair.”

“Queen Elizabeth, I think she would agree with me.”

“That was a very unusual circumstance…”

“Marilyn Monroe?”

“A complete misunderstanding.”

“Doctor, how many weddings have you had?”

“I’m not sure…six maybe seven.”

“I rest my case.”

She crossed the room and climbed on top of him, her knees on either side of his hips, her slightly rounded belly hovered over his chest as she bent over to kiss him. “Now quit moping about and help me find our home – I think I am experiencing a strong nesting instinct.”

“Alright, I’ll go and scope out this planet of yours.” He wanted to remain cross, but she was trailing little kisses down the side of his face. She pulled back to look at him and her long golden hair hung like a curtain around them, sheltering them in this moment. She made him just ridiculously happy, it was almost embarrassing.

“Do you want to know a secret before I go?” She nodded and he brought his hands to cup her face bringing her closer.

“I’m going to spend the rest of my life desperately in love with you.”

“Oh sweetie, that’s not a secret.”

“You knew that already, did you?” He smiled charmingly.

“Of course,” she teased, “but I’ve got a proper secret and I’ll tell you as soon as you get back.”

He made his way carefully out of the tardis, which he’d cloaked and concealed with three different technologies. He wore a vortex manipulator on his wrist – River insisted on it whenever she couldn’t be with him. The coordinates were pre-set and designed to snap him back into the tardis if he got into any serious trouble. He smiled to think how cautious they’d both become as he looked around at the wide, green lawn he’d stepped onto.

It was a chilly, bright blue day. The air was crisp and smelled lightly of smoke, as if somewhere nearby there was a bonfire, he loved bonfires. Massive oaks bordered the green lawn and as he made his way across it low chime began to toll. Within a few minutes young people sporting scarves and long woolen coats were crisscrossing the green, chatting happily.

And there was River walking briskly across the lawn. She’d changed clothes to fit in with the crowd; she wore a striped scarf and sage green sweater which was stretched tight against her swollen belly. If it were possible, she somehow looked more pregnant than she had a few minutes ago. Bloody hell, he thought, she’s always taking unnecessary risks, like strolling about on a planet they knew nothing about when she was supposed to be waiting safely in the tardis - it was an almost constant source of argument between them. He was turning to follow her when a fresh-faced young man started waving in his direction.

“Professor!” he called, running up to him. “Professor Smith!”

“What, me?”

“Professor,” the young man dropped his bag on the grass and started rifling through it. “Here it is, as promised.”

“What?”

“My end of term paper, sir,” He handed the Doctor a thick stack of paper. “Look, I’m sorry again about missing your final lecture, but I had to go back and get this and here it is.”

The Doctor considered the pages in his hands. “A Comparison of heroic literature from extinct cultures?”

“Yes, sir.” The boy said nodding enthusiastically. “And, I added in the poem from 4th century Gallifrey that you suggested, although I had to work from the translation I’m afraid.”

“Did you now?” The doctor tried to look nonplussed, if nothing else the last 900 years had given him plenty of experience in pretending he knew what was going on. “Well, I’m sure I’ll find it…enlightening.”

“Thanks professor, and if you don’t mind me asking, shouldn’t you be at your lecture?” He looked at an instrument on his wrist. “I think you must be running late.”

“Yes, yes, off I go.” The Doctor started to walk in the direction he’d seen River walking, but the boy ran after him.

“Um, professor, it’s in the histories lecture hall – you know down the hall from your office.” He pointed to a tall, gothic brick building in the opposite direction. “Over there.”

“Of course, well I’d better run.” The Doctor headed off in toward the building under the skeptical stare of the young man.

The building turned out to be called, Tannem Hall, according to a well-worn bronze plaque on a massive set of double doors. He gave them an experimental push and they swung inward with a creak. Well, he might as well have a look around this office of his, he just needed to avoid that lecture hall. He found a directory and scanned for a Professor Smith. A-ha, fourth floor.

He made his way up an elegantly carved stair to the fourth floor landing, there were only four offices up here and Smith, was neatly etched in the glass of the second door to the right. He tried the knob and found the door unlocked. Not overly cautious is he this Professor Smith? the Doctor thought with a twinge of irritation at his future self.

The office was a cozy, jumbled mess. A motley collection of strange artifacts was scattered over one heavy wooden desk, while a second desk was piled with richly bound books. Real books, and here it was the 31st century. The floor was covered with a Persian rug in deep reds and a very familiar tufted leather sofa was positioned in front of a lovely set of windows. He moved over to the sofa and discovered that he could see the whole of an elegantly old fashioned university – all red brick buildings covered in ivy. In the distance there was a little village and beyond that he could see fields stretching off over rolling countryside.

“Well it’s certainly picturesque.” He said to no one in particular.

“You shouldn’t be here,” came an unexpected reply. He turned too quickly and ended up falling backwards onto the couch, knocking over a heavily burdened coat tree on his way down. He emerged from beneath a pile of heavy coats, and knitted caps to see a red-haired girl of about eight or nine peering at him suspiciously.

“Why, not? And I should say the same of you – you look a little young to be matriculating at university.”

“My parents work here, but I sometimes listen to the lectures – they’re not that advanced,” she said with a little sniff, clearly she thought that she was exactly old enough to be at university. “My mum sent me here for this,” she indicated with a shrug a large shoulder bag. “If you leave right now I won’t tell her I’ve seen you.”

“What, is this your mum’s office then?”

“Yes, it is, and you shouldn’t be here.”

“Well alright then, apologies all around, I’ll just be going then.” The little girl gave him an appraising look. “Set the hat rack back as it was or I’ll be blamed for it.”

He did and left, setting off back down the stairs and in the direction he’d seen River go. He headed down a leafy street, paved with brick, it deposited him in the town square. It was lovely too, with a fountain and a little park, musicians and caterers were busy setting up for some kind of a party.

“Oh hello Doctor,” said a cheerily plump older lady taking his hand and pumping it. “Will you be coming to the end-of-term party?”

“Um, certainly…wouldn’t miss it.”

“Marvelous. You know I just saw your Amelia running off home like a mad hare. I can’t believe how that girl has grown.”

“My Ameilia, you saw my Amelia?”

“Well of course,” the woman looked at him with an indulgent smile.
“And which way did she go?”

“Towards your house love – just that way!” She gave him a playful push and rolled her eyes towards the heavens. “Oh Professor – always with your head in the clouds.”

He strolled down the lane as indicated. It led away from town and as he walked the front gardens got bigger as if the houses needed more room to themselves. He turned a corner and ran right into the girl from the office, this time she was towing a younger boy, maybe he was five, behind her.

“Daddy!” The boy threw his arms around the doctor’s legs. “I thought you were working.”

The Doctor was going to say something when the girl cut in.

“Jamie, you’re such an idiot. Can’t you tell he’s not right?”

“I am not an idiot,” the boy pouted.

“Of course you’re not,” the Doctor said kindly putting a hand on Jamie’s shoulder. “But what do you mean, I’m not right?”

“As if you don’t know!” The little girl all but stamped her foot in frustration. “You’re too early, you shouldn’t be here, not yet.”

“Ooooh,” said Jamie, clearly impressed. “You’d better hadn’t let Mummy see you, she’ll be cross.”

A group of older children came running down the street, “Amelia, are you coming or what?” called a boy.

The red-haired girl grabbed Jamie’s hand. “Come along, I don’t want to miss the party.”
Jamie snatched his hand back. “No, I’m going to help Daddy, he’ll get into trouble without me.”

“Suit yourself,” said the girl and, with that, she turned to race after her friends.

“Your sister?” asked the Doctor. There were two of them, they had two children.

“She thinks she’s so smart.”

“Well maybe she is.” He tousled the boys brown curls. “She’s right about me, after all. I am here a bit too early.”

“So you need somebody to show you around?” Jamie looked up at him with bright green eyes.

“Yes that would be splendid.” And with that, the Doctor followed his son down the lane.

“This is our garden,” said Jamie. The garden was wild and overgrown, full of the scents of flowers from a hundred worlds. Two large oak trees towered over the house, their dark branches curving gently against the sky. The Doctor could see a tree house, painted blue.

“It’s brilliant.”

“I know. The neighbors all think it’s a mess but Mummy fancies it this way.”

“Where is your mum?”

The front door banged open and a toddler with gleaming golden curls came tearing down the front walk, completely naked. River was chasing after him.

“Oh no you don’t, Finian, straight back into the bath with you.” She said hoisting the boy onto her hip. Jamie had pulled the Doctor behind a clump of hydrangea and they watched together as she marched back up the front steps, explaining something about bubbles and ducks.

“You have a little brother, too?” The Doctor was starting to feel a little woozy. It was something new to go from having a baby on the way to having three children all in the space of an hour.

Jamie was about to answer him when the front door banged open again and the golden-curled boy streaked out into the lawn, this time in a red superhero cape, blue pajamas and a garish purple hat.

“Oh well at least he’s dressed this time.” The doctor was admiring his youngest son’s taste in fashion, the kid had style.

“Oh no, there’s two of them, that’s Charlie.”

“Twins, you have twin little brothers.” OK, deep breaths. Four children was great, it was fantastic…it was three more than he’d had an hour ago.

“Yep, they’re dead clever and they always get into everything. Mum says you let them get away with murder on account of their being so cute.”

Charlie was running in circles in the yard, laughing hysterically as his super-hero cape billowed behind him. His toddler cheeks were round and glowing and his big blue eyes twinkled with the excitement of this game. The Doctor was so absorbed in watching this child, his child, that he didn’t realize that River was standing in front of him until he felt her shadow fall across his face.

“James Roranacus, you are supposed to be in the town square with your sister.” She patted him on the back and gently pushed him. “Off you go. I need to talk to Daddy.”

Jamie shot him an apologetic look before traipsing off.

She was standing in front of him with her hands on her hips. She was still wearing the sage green sweater and now that she was so close it was obvious that she was far more pregnant than the River he’d left on the tardis. In fact, she was very pregnant.

“Oh my god, that makes five.” He sputtered pointing at her belly.

“Nope, it makes six.”

“River, I think I might need to lie down.”

“Lying down seems to be what gets us into this exact kind of trouble.” She was grinning at him, but she had a hard look in her eyes.

“So when are you coming from? And you better hope I like your answer.”

He realized that she was pointing some sort of weapon at him. She was carefully standing so that the boy playing in the yard couldn’t see what she was doing, but she clearly meant business.

“You’d shoot me?”

“No sweetie, but I will knock you out, erase your memory and drag your skinny behind right back to your Tardis and send you some other time.”

“You really shouldn’t be carrying heavy loads.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Really? I’ve been here before?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, and we’ve now had this exact conversation eight times. Although I must say I really enjoyed all the visits from your ninth regeneration.” She waggled her eyebrows. “Now out with it, I’m supposed to meet you in thirty minutes down at the end-of-term party.”

She was giving him a very plain hurry-it-up look and her silvery gun was still pointed at his head.

“You sent me here. You’re pregnant, I mean the other you, for the first time. And while that seems to be a very common occurrence in your life now, it’s still new to us.”

“Oh,” her face relaxed. “Yes, of course, I remember this day.” She pocketed the gun and called to the boy in the yard to come along into the house. “Well, what are you waiting for?” she called over her shoulder as she walked back towards the front porch with a toddler by the hand, “come inside and help get this lot ready to go.”

Everything about the house felt lived-in and comfortable. It was centuries old and it vibrated with the memories of generations of inhabitants. He could tell that nobody much cared to keep the place too tidy, which was just as he preferred things anyway. He followed River and the twin boys into a bedroom painted in swirls of deep purples and blues. Someone had drawn a careful mural of the local nebulae galaxies in shimmering golden paint and annotated it with a complex sequence of old high Gallifreyan poetic algorithms.

River hefted a naked, wiggling Finian onto a changing table. He grinned at his father over her shoulder and chanted “No clothes!” in four different languages.

“And to think, their classmates are still on primary colors.” River said smiling fondly at her son as she tugged a sweater over his head. “Find something suitable for Charlie to wear please.”

In short order they had both twins dressed warmly and bundled into a sort of wagon thing that they pulled along behind them as they walked back towards the village square. The Doctor sang a little nursery song from his childhood for the boys. When he got to the chorus they both joined in, their babyish voices adorably off-pitch. He met River’s eyes and they both smiled.

“So aren’t you going to erase my memories?”

“Nope, this time you get to keep them. You’ll move here in the morning. Well, you’ll move here in the morning eight years ago. You need to know how it all works.”

“So how does it all work?”

“We’re faculty at the university. I’m posing as an archaeologist and you’re everyone’s favorite history professor. We both specialize in extinct cultures with a special interest in Gallifrey and all things Time Lord.”

“Hiding in plain sight.”

“Exactly, anyone looking for us might scan for alien tech. But we’ve got the perfect excuse for having an incredible collection of off world technology.” She gestured to the scanner clipped to her belt. “And we specialize in Gallifrey so that we can teach our children about their language and history without attracting too much attention. I mean, the town thinks we’re eccentric but not uncommonly so.”

The Doctor looked back towards his youngest two sons. He stopped walking to take it all in. They had a passel of children and their own little Gallifreyan academy. “This is brilliant! I’ve got to go tell you.”

“Actually, if memory serves, I’m up in our university office with you and will be for at least another two hours.” She smiled at the look on his face, “Oh, better get used to it sweetie, happens all the time.”

He glanced back at the boys who were still happily singing, “So then I guess you need a date to this party then, do you think there will be dancing?”

Chapter Text

“That’s the trouble with posing as an archaeologist I suppose.” River was throwing clothes and an assortment of gear into a leather duffle. The Doctor watched her pack, shifting his weight from side to side in an effort to rock their two year old son to sleep. “Every now and then they do expect me to take students on expeditions. Are you sure you’ll be alright on your own?” She paused in her packing to watch him plant a kiss in his son’s wild, auburn curls before carefully laying him down in his crib.

 “I’m nearly a thousand years old, I’ve traveled to the beginning of time, I’ve saved the universe at least three times. I think I can handle a couple of five year olds and a toddler for a few of weeks.” Just then a loud crash sounded from the back garden workshop. He and River rushed through the back door and across the lawn. She threw open the workshop doors to find Amelia and Anastasia standing in the smoking remains of the isomorphic distributor the Doctor had been tinkering with for weeks. They wore twin expressions of shock on their sooty faces. Anastasia still had the sonic screwdriver in her little hand and was twisting up her face in preparation for a good cry, which was her typical way of avoiding any share of the blame when something went wrong.

"You can just shut down the waterworks right there, missy,” snapped River as the Doctor plucked his screwdriver from Anastasia’s hand.

“We were making a vortex manipulator out of your distributor.” Amelia said in a matter-of-fact tone, placing her hands on her hips and going on the offense.

“How many times,” he said fondly, flopping cross-legged on the floor and rolling up his shirt sleeves. “You can’t fold a six dimensional transverter into a neutron fueled matrix without first checking that the meta-locks are engaged. Now Amelia, hand Daddy that transposer and I’ll show you both how to rewire it properly.”

“Well as you’ve got everything firmly in hand, I’d better go.” River bent and kissed him on the top of his head. The Doctor scrambled to his feet.

“Hold on girls, I’ll be right back.”

He walked River out the front garden gate, carrying her satchel for her, it felt oddly heavy.

“River, how many guns are in here?” She just smiled at him. He handed the bag over and watched; transfixed by the way the afternoon sunlight illuminated her profile, as she slung it over her shoulder. She turned back and kissed him, really kissed him. He wrapped one arm around her waist and slowly bent her backwards.

“I’ll be fine and I’ve got two blasters and Jack’s old squareness gun in my bag.”

“I think I can safely say that this is the first time in my life that I am actually comforted by your being armed and deadly.” He ran a finger down her nose. “Come home safe.”

As much as she would miss the Doctor and the kids, River had to admit it was fun to be off on a little adventure. “OK ladies and gentlemen,” she announced to her students over their ship’s com system, “lets go see the pyramids of  Sancleen.” Her undergraduates whooped with excitement and they were off. The ship they had chartered was simple enough to fly, but at least two of her male students fell instantly in love with her when they discovered that she was piloting them to their destination. They spent most of the 12 hour flight hanging around the cockpit door looking awkward and attempting to impress her. So adorable! She loved sophomores. She had fifteen students in all and a camp cook whose job it would be to make sure they were all comfortable and well fed during the excavations. By the time they landed it was just dawn on Sancleen and she set the cook and the most eager students to the task of setting up camp.

Sancleen was a deserted planet, had been for millennia. Some geologic crises had frozen over the oceans and most of the planets life forms thousands of years ago. It was a perfect time capsule, a good place to practice archaeology. It was also breathtakingly beautiful. From their ship’s landing site she could see a whole forest – crystallized in ice. Glassy trees towered above her, glittering in the purpling hues of the rising sun. No one had been here for eons…yet some part of the assassin in River could not rest until she had personally scouted the perimeter. Old habits die hard, she thought to herself. She took a small hover bike from the ship’s hold and told her students she’d be back in half an hour.

“Just going to take a quick look around, take some baseline readings before we start in tomorrow.” She had changed before landing into a padded white down jacket; and now she clamped on her utility belt, making sure both her ion blaster and her squareness gun were charged before throwing one leg over the hover bike and shooting off.

It was glorious. The icy wind whipped her long, golden hair out behind her in a rippling sheet and she found herself laughing out loud at the sheer, unbelievable gorgeousness of this planet. She was out of the forest, riding over a solid frozen sheet of slowly rising grassland – each blade of grass, each flower perfectly preserved – frozen in stillness.  No one could see her so she didn’t even try to pretend to be human – it had been a long time since she’d felt so uninhibited. It had been five years of acting as if she got tired when she didn’t or hungry or all those normal humany things that didn’t actually apply to her. The plains gave way to a vast, frozen ocean – locked for eternity in the midst of a raging storm. She increased her speed, darting between frozen waves, breaking forever on a powdery white shore. She was marveling at the way the clouds themselves had frozen and thinking that she could probably adjust the thrusters on this bike and gain enough altitude to explore them, when she felt an undeniable tickling in the back of her mind. Years of combat training told her she was being watched. She looked back nervously, who the hell is out here anyway. She pulled back on her speed and shot upwards to get a better view and came nose to nose with a small silvery spaceship. Slitheen - this was her last coherent thought before the ship opened fire, hitting her bike. She pushed off hard to try to get some distance between herself and the exploding vehicle, something hit her hard in the chest and she was in freefall. Everything was white, searing pain.

When River came to she was lying face up in soft white sand. She registered three things: she was not dead, she had probably broken a rib or two, and the man hovering over her was incredibly hot.

He noticed that she was conscious and sat back on his haunches, studying her dispassionately. She knew that look, knew it well. He was assessing her strengths, deciding if she was a threat. This was a warrior, best to be direct.

“Are you with the Slitheen?” She struggled into a sitting position trying to disguise her quick search of her utility belt in the process; both guns were gone.

“Missing something?” He gave her a lunatic grin. Oh hell, he’d caught her looking. Get smart River, she told herself. You do not need to die on this frozen beach. “Nope, not Slitheen, and luckily for me you flew right into their line of fire. They were aiming right at me.”

 “Listen, whoever you are, I’m…” she stopped talking abruptly as the strange man flopped down on the sand cross-legged with such a familiar sequence of motions that she drew in her breath sharply. She gave him a forced smile while she reached into his mind and then scrambled back out again, fast, oh shit.

 “You really should be dead.” The Doctor mused, looking out at the frozen, churning waves. She could see his mind working away behind those steely grey eyes and even though a good portion of her rational self was taken up with the very real thought that this Doctor was very early and seriously dangerous, she couldn’t stop herself from caressing his sharp, angular features with her gaze. He caught her looking and her pulse quickened sending a flush over her cheeks.

 “Sorry to disappoint you,” she said and hopped to her feet. “And I’ll have my squareness gun and my ion blaster back.” To her surprise, he handed them to her.  She removed her computer from her belt and checked her location with a quick sequence of taps. She was about thirty miles from camp. He watched her movements like a cat watching a mouse, it was unnerving.

 “Funny thing about you is you’ve got at least five different kinds of alien tech and three of them haven’t been invented yet.” He was still sitting, but now his posture was more like a crouch. She imagined him pouncing on her, pushing her into the sand, running that hard jaw against the softest parts of her body. She shook herself, trying to get in charge of her libido. He raised his eyebrows at her.

 “Look, I’d love to play sweetie, but I’ve got a group of undergraduates on this planet, who I don’t intend to return to their parents in body bags. So let’s go find your friends the Slitheen and neutralize them.” As if on cue, the silvery spaceship reappeared and the Doctor sprung forward knocking River onto the sand and out of the line of fire. She rolled, grabbing for her blaster and came up fast, taking aim at the ship before it sped over the horizon again. She managed to just clip it and the ship wobbled strangely before plummeting out of sight, trailing smoke.

“Who are you?” The Doctor demanded.

“Professor River Song, University of New Cambridge. Now come on, we’ve got some intergalactic thugs to hunt down, before they find my students. Nobody is dying on my first expedition.”

- - -

In the end it hadn’t been hard to find the Slitheen ship it’s smoking engines sent a smoky trail that they followed right to the crash site. River stood over the dead pilot, his large liquid black eyes staring blankly, while the Doctor surveyed the crash site. “There was one other,” he said, “but where did he go.”

 River climbed up on the ship’s wing and scanned the horizon with one hand shielding her eyes. Nothing to the east but sprawling, frozen sand; to the west the land rose up in an immense cliff, hanging over the sea. Altitude, visibility if she were the slitheen that’s where she’d go. “I think he would probably have headed west, don’t you think?.” She took out her computer and did a quick scan of the geography –nothing. “I think maybe we should scout that cliff face.” He didn’t reply. “Are you paying attention?” she said crossly turning around.

 The remaining slitheen, had her claws clamped around the Doctor’s neck and was slowly lifting him off the ground. He was kicking at her with his heavy boots, making the creature dodge awkwardly.

 “Every time,” River said, a small smile playing at her lips. She jumped down just as the Doctor’s boot managed to make contact with the Slitheen’s larynx, she roared and dropped the doctor, who landed with an agility River had never seen him possess, in a fighting stance directly in front of the creature.

 "Doctor get down.” She yelled. He dropped to the ground like a stone and River pumped two ion blasts into the slitheen’s large, grey head.

 “You killed her.” He said angrily, turning to her. “You didn’t have to do that.”

 “Actually, I did.” She rounded on him just as angrily. “The Slitheen are a crime syndicate and they take revenge seriously, as you good and damn well know as they seem to be chasing you already. And, I’d already killed the pilot, if I let this one go it would never stop hunting me or you. She stopped talking for a second and considered the consequences of her rash actions back on the beach. “I’m here on a very well documented research grant it would be staggeringly easy for it to track me.”

"You could have let me do it."

"I wasn't sure that you would."

 He stood in silence considering her words. His ragged dark blonde hair ruffled slightly in the wind and his sharp angular face held so much raw emotion. He was in so much pain, the events of Time War couldn’t be very far in his past. The sight of him, like this, cut right through her. She laid her hand on his shoulder, he flinched back.

 “I never said I was called Doctor.” His tone was dark and dangerous, but she could hear a hint of the insatiable curiosity that she loved so very much.

 “I better get back to my camp.”

 “I’ll go with you.”

 They got in sight of the forest that held her camp just as night was falling. He hadn’t mentioned the tardis and so she didn’t either, deciding just to play along. Anyway she wanted to run; thirty miles was nothing. They’d run like wild, racing each other through the dunes and the frozen prairie. She caught brief glimpses of joy in his face as he realized how fast she was – he did so love to run. Her hearts were thundering in her ears she felt strong and alive. He slowed as they entered the forest.

 “What’s the matter are you tired?” She teased him in a familiar tone,  that was probably a mistake. He had her pinned against a tree in a second, moving faster than she’d ever seen him move. His jaw brushed hers as he placed his lips against her ear and whispered, “no, I’m not and neither are you – you’re not even winded. Not to mention that you survived a two hundred foot drop.” He pulled back to face her, wearing that lunatic grin. “What are you? Not human, but what?”

 “I’m not your enemy if that’s what you’re thinking.” She met his steely gaze without flinching. He was so close - his body radiating heat in contrast to the chill air around them. He’d waited to attack until they were in the forest so she’d have a harder time bolting, which was clever of him. It also meant he’d decided she was a threat. He was trying to pry painfully at her mind, but she was an exceptionally strong telepath even for a timelord, and she fought him off. Stop, you’re hurting me! He leapt back in surprise, realization dawning on his face.

 “No it can’t be. You’re all locked away in the Time war, nobody else got through.” But if she had, then she might be an enemy and so he was prepared to kill her, she could feel that thought strumming through the connection she’d opened between them. And he was strong and fast, deadlier than she’d ever seen him – she wouldn’t walk away if he decided to strike.

 “I’m not from Gallifrey,” she said throwing up her hands in between them in a gesture of surrender. “And, I really don’t want to die here. I’ve kinda got plans for the weekend.”

 He smiled at that, good she’d broken through that tough exterior, but he still flinched as she took a step forward and placed her hands on his temples.

 “Shhh, I’m going to show you everything, OK?” He nodded, keeping her locked in his gaze. “And, after I’ve shown you everything, you’re going to agree to forget it all.”

 “That’s doesn’t seem very likely.” His whisper was harsh.

 “It’s extremely likely,” she whispered in return pressing her lips against his and letting her consciousness flow over him. She felt him flounder against the rush of emotions, let go my love; it’s ok, I’ve got you.  A thousand moments swirled around them, happening again, happening for the first time: he traces a finger down her nose; they run laughing, hand-in-hand through a rain storm sheltering under an ancient oak; a sunbeam breaks through their bedroom window, illuminating the sleeping faces of their infant twins. They lived all these moments, not as memory, but as an instant of infinite experience. It was the purest form of time travel to move unimpeded through another’s past, and she gave herself over to him – opening further and further until he collapsed at her feet, sobbing and smiling all at once.

 She dropped to her knees and cradled him in her arms. He looked up at her with such undisguised longing. “I don’t deserve it.”

 “Oh sweetheart, you do and you will. But do you see now why you have to forget? You have to live, and love Rose, and grow into him, become my Doctor.”

 “I know, I’ll forget” He stood and pulled her to her feet

 She gave him a long, blazing look. “Good, but not until morning.” 

 She snuck him out of camp before daybreak, and they walked hand in hand back to the tardis. River walked in silence, relishing the pleasantly sore feeling that rippled through her body. She’d have bruises, but they’d fade before she went home. Home to a Doctor who would never remember how he’d wanted to kill her and then utterly possess her all in the space of a few hours. Home to a Doctor who would not appreciate that she had fallen in love with the darkest parts of him.  She would never tell him, because he would not thank her for taking such a terrible risk. But, she trusted him, even like this, even wounded and angry, she trusted him.

 She stood with him at the controls of the tardis and placed her lips against his forehead. Forget. She combed through his mind, loosening all the fragments of her and letting them drift away like dust motes on a sunbeam. And there was something here, another memory of her, loose and hazy, but still there, hidden away and so very sad.  He’d seen her already so she would see him again. Forget.

Chapter Text

“I’ve got to go.”

 The Doctor was standing in his living room talking to no one in particular. All around him the house buzzed with all the normal cacophony of his life. He paused for just a moment to take stock of all he was about to lose. He had a life, a normal life, six ridiculously amazing children all currently engaged in a loud fight over a recent game of football, and a wife singing off-key to herself as she made dinner. But he also had a wife who was somewhere, sometime falling to her death; therefore, he had to go. He looked again at the message that had appeared on his psychic paper:

I seem to have angered the Atraxi, so I’m going to try this leap of faith thing you keep talking about. 150A/ 20E/ 1990489w

“Dad, what’s that?” said Finian, grabbing the psychic paper out of his hands. “Look! Check it out Charile,” Finian flopped down on the sofa next to his identical twin brother who glanced at the paper and gave him a high-five. “Coordinates!” The boys whooped in unison, they were fifteen and extremely excited by any sort of adventure.

“You can’t go.” The Doctor said crossly, taking back his paper and marching into the kitchen where he silently handed it to River. She glanced at it briefly, folded it and handed it back to him.

“You’ll have to hurry, the slipstream dynamics won’t hold for more than a few minutes.”

Her eyes were cold and glassy, remembering that day – the day she’d blown up an atraxi ship and thrown herself into the abyss of space. Every time she’d met him before that she’d been hunting him and he’d always been so maddeningly cheerful about that fact. Oh hello Melody, are you going to try to kill me again?  He would run and she would give chase, across planets, across galaxies. She was focused on his extinction and he seemed to be playing some sort of delightful game. He left her little messages; If you’re ever in trouble just call and I’ll catch you.

In time, she’d stopped hating him. She could see the truth of what he was despite the years of torture and brainwashing. He wasn’t some megalomaniac bent on destroying the universe; he was simply the Doctor – an irrepressible madman, the last of his kind, well at least until she came along…and then there were two – what could keep them apart?

She supposed they hadn’t counted on that – the people who’d taken her from her mother’s arms and trained her to be a killer. They hadn’t counted on the most basic law of nature – attraction. At some point she realized she was chasing him because she wanted to be near him – be near someone like her. She wanted answers to her questions. She wanted to not be alone. It’s a leap of faith, he’d whispered into her ear like a lover even though her shaking hands pressed a knife against his throat, when you are ready to trust me I’ll be there. She’d released him and he’d sauntered away blowing her a quick kiss and she’d run, run from him, run from her captors and run afoul of an Atraxi fleet. She’d sent him the message just like he’d shown her, taken a deep breath and leapt, the explosion thundering in the belly of the ship. He’d been there to catch her - he’d been there for everything that came after and before. He’d loved her so utterly from the moment he met her and she hadn’t known to wonder why. Now, he was leaving.

“River” He was holding her by the shoulders. It wasn’t until he said her name that she came back to the present, realized that the entire household was gathered around, seven anxious faces watched her.

“River, I will see you again. I swear to you. I will see you again and again and we will both have already been here. Do you hear me?”

“Go!” Her voice was full of steely resolve, the echo of his River from so long ago, and he supposed, from days to come.

He kissed her and brushed a stray blond tendril away from her pale face. He’d known it was almost time. He’d always known they didn’t have fifty years, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell her that it would be like this. That they’d be torn apart after just a few decades, that she’d have to carry on without him. The children would help her. He looked at the lot of them gathered in the kitchen. Anastasia, who immediately understood what was happening, was weeping in her twin sister’s arms. Amelia was trying, as always, to be tough, but he could see the muscles of her jaw tighten. At twenty-one, they were adults now, by human standards – but of course they weren’t. Jamie had an arm around his mother and met his father’s eye with a steady look. Despite his halo of unruly curls, he had nothing of River’s wildness – he was Rory through and through. Good, that was a comforting thought – Jamie would keep everyone grounded. The idea of leaving Finn and Charlie was not so good; his unmanageable twin sons looked disappointed to be left out of the adventure and not at all bothered by the idea of his imminent departure. No doubt they would scheme up some way to try to follow him. He sighed, River could sort them out. But it was Claire that broke his heart, at twelve she was little more than a baby by the standards of his people. His little Claire, so tender-hearted, such an old soul - would he ever see her again?

“You will Daddy.” Claire’s little voice rang out. Telepathic children made secret keeping nearly impossible. “I’ve seen it.” He looked into his daughter’s eyes. Claire saw the future and the past, she lived in more than one moment at once, it was a rare gift or maybe a rare curse – but she bore it with equanimity.  

“OK, then.” He looked around the kitchen, gave everyone a cheery wave, turned on his heel and bolted out the back door and into the garden, where his tardis stood waiting. It was such an impossible thing to do. So unthinkable to just to leave them all, but he had to. If he delayed, even another minute – the timeline in which younger River fell would harden and crystallize and he would be powerless to stop her death and everyone in that kitchen would fade from existence.

So he ran, ran from her and to her and away from her and towards her in a dizzying spin. He flung open the doors and a girl (she really was little more than a girl) slammed into him – knocking him to the control room floor. He took one look at her and laughed out loud.

“Doctor?” Her voice was all amazement; as if she hadn’t really expected it to work. She sat up and pushed away from him, scrambling backwards, turning over his coat-rack in the process.

“River,” he said in answer, still chuckling. “Look at you! You’re ginger! You didn’t say you’d be ginger.”

The girl’s eyes widened. “What are you talking about, of course I’m ginger – I’ve always been ginger and who the hell is River?

__________________________

In New Cambridge, River lay sobbing on her bathroom floor. She’d known it would happen and she’d known it would hurt to lose him, but she’d never let herself dwell on it and she hadn’t dreaded it. That’s how she survived this life – she was a master at compartmentalizing. But now it was upon her – this hard reality was here and it was kicking her ass. He was gone, she would see him but it would be like it had been before, stolen moments out of time, a day here, maybe a week. And, their roles would reverse. He would take a step backwards for every step she took forward, moving always a little bit further out of reach. She watched her lonely path unfold in front of her and sobbed even harder, curling on the cold tiles around the searing, eviscerating pain that was his absence. A part of her floated detached, watching herself, amazed that she’d held the capacity to feel anything this strongly. She kept expecting that it would end, that she would end. That somehow the sheer un-fucking-believable misery of it would kill her. But instead, she kept taking ragged breaths in and out and her hearts, those traitors, continued to beat away in the hollowed out husk of her chest. She pulled herself to her feet and examined her face in the mirror. She still looked about thirty – granted she looked terrible, her face red and blotchy, her hair wet with tears and snot - but her youthful face was still there, essentially unchanged. She decided that she hated looking like this; eternal youth was a liability and a lie. She was over a hundred and at the moment she felt every minute of it. Next time, she thought I’m going to look older.

 ______________________________

He’d watch Melody, in those early weeks, watch her move through the control room as he carefully explained how everything worked. She moved like River, always so aware of her body, so precise with each motion that it looked like she was moving through some arcane martial art form. She looked and actually was (for a change) in her mid-twenties. With Amy’s hair and Rory’s eyes, she was the most human version of his wife he’d ever met. She was lovely. He ached to take her body into his arms and chart every inch of this new geography. And she wanted him too, he knew well what her desire looked like – her body turned towards him slightly, her eyelids lowered, a fleeting smile at her lips. But, this woman was so young and she didn’t trust him – not completely anyway. She made a room for herself down an upper corridor – the same one Amy and Rory had always used, he noted with a quiet smile. He could go days and only catch the faintest glimpse of her, but the moment she emerged he found it nearly impossible to tear his eyes away and she noticed.

___________________________

Anastasia and her twin brothers had gone missing. River blamed herself. Really she should have been paying more attention to them. One of the vortex manipulators was gone as well. The other three pled complete ignorance as to the whereabouts of their siblings but River knew lying when she heard it – she heard it enough, she ought to know. She cornered Jamie, always the weakest link in any family secret-keeping, one afternoon as he was fetching a snack from the cupboard. After some well placed maternal guilt had been applied, Jamie broke down and told her the whole story. The Time War, they’d all gotten obsessed with the Time War, they wanted to see Gallifrey.

River sat down hard at the kitchen table and faced her eldest son. “It’s time-locked, the whole war is time-locked, and no one can get in.”

“Well the twins had a theory that while the war was timelocked – they could use a single point time energy signal linked to Dad’s biometrics to access the moment of actual planetary collapse.”

She understood. There had been a time in her life when the destruction of Gallifrey felt like a nightmare story. She’d wanted to see for herself and he’d shown her. “You could have just asked me. I’ve seen it. I would have shown you.”

“I don’t want to see it.” Jamie patted her shoulder and turned to leave. “Honestly, I think they don’t either – they just want to see Dad.”

River sat there with the Doctor’s words echoing in her mind he’s dangerous, I’m dangerous like that.

He’d known, he’d always known immediately when she’d been with some other version of himself. He always took it in stride if it was his current face or even his tenth, but not nine. The day she’d come home from that dig on Sancleen where she’d first met nine, he’d hugged her tightly and then sniffed her.

“What are you doing?” She’d asked, laughter turning to concern as she took in the expression on his face.

“I can smell him all over you.”  He gave her a dark look, and her breath caught in her throat at the absolute fury in his eyes.

“So what? Since when has that ever mattered to us?” She had decided to try taking the high ground, which in the long history of their marital arguments had never once worked.

“Don’t even try it. You know how I feel about…him.”

“He is you.” She looked at him tenderly; this man’s self-loathing really knew no bounds. “I love you, no matter what, I always love you.”

“I’m dangerous like that. Oh River, you insane gun-wielding maniac, I’m on the look-out for Time Lords that escaped  – you reek of time energies, I’d immediately think you were one of Rassilon’s assassins.”

“Yep, that’s essentially what happened.”

 “Give me back the memory.” He was staring at her with a hard blazing look that had sent whole armies running in fear.

“No.” She held his gaze, he could glare at her all he wanted, under no circumstances would she be party to his masochism. “I won’t help you find reasons to hate yourself.”

“Then tell me what happened…” he held up his hands at the rising color in her cheeks, “the PG version please.”

“You decided I was a threat, I changed your mind…quite thoroughly I might add.” She couldn’t help throwing that last bit in with a little sideways smile.

“Please promise me you’ll stay away from him, from me, when I’m like that, please.”

“No.”  She couldn’t lie to him about this. “I promise not to seek him out, but if it just happens it’s because you need me – it almost always is. You know that. And besides, one day you’ll be spending a lot of time just barely talking me out of killing you,” she crossed the space between them and ran her fingers into his hair. “You don’t see me going on and on about it.”

He’d laughed then and the argument was over, but she’d known he was right. He was dangerous like that and now her children were recklessly seeking him out.

 ________________ 

He stood in the corridor outside Melody’s room cringing at the sound of her screaming. Her nightmares weren’t getting any better as time went on and he knew from long experience that they would never completely fade. Always before he’d been the sanctuary that she sought when the terrors from her past rose up in her dreams. He’d always felt just a little bit of guilty pleasure that she wanted him and only him. It wasn’t that he wanted her to be sad, but she was normally so tough, even a little scary. These rare times, when she was fragile and scared were for his eyes only. She’d curl against his chest and let him hold her until her breathing settled. Now she was in there alone. He wasn’t sure what would happen if he opened the door, she’d likely try to kill him. He took a deep breath and walked into the darkened room, crossing to the bed in three long strides and taking her into his arms. She struggled against him, clawing and kicking in a quick burst of strength. “Shhh, it’s ok, you’re safe, you’re safe.” He could feel her heart pounding away as he clutched her to his chest. After a long moment, she collapsed into him.

“Why are you being kind to me?” Melody’s voice was a knife slicing in the dark. She suspected him of playing some cruel game, even now. The Doctor had imagined this moment for years, wondering how he would cross the chasm between them when it met his feet. River, of long ago and days yet to come, had stood on her tiptoes and whispered his name into his ear – held it up to him like a talisman. She’d been sorry and obviously in love and he’d been so very afraid. Now, he marveled at her bravery and searched himself for a piece of her strength, but found nothing.

“I’m a time traveler; I don’t always meet people in the right order.” He explained clumsily. She stiffened in his arms and he knew he had only seconds left in this little stolen moment in the night, seconds before she retreated from him. “I know you in your future, you are…” he was struggling, dear gods this was hard, “you are so very amazing and you are very important.”

She drew back and examined his face in the dim light. “Are you in love with me, Doctor?”  Her voice held no emotion, only a flat kind of curiosity.

He felt as if he were walking along the edge of a knife. His past and her future held precariously in the balance. He shifted nervously, avoiding her eyes, trying to think. How had River done this? How had she made it look so effortless when he was the one demanding to know? She’d always told him what he needed to hear, nothing more. He thought about River, on the night of Rory and Amy’s wedding, her wild hair spilling around her shoulders as she teased out answers to his questions yes, yes, yes.

“Yes.” It had been true since she’d handcuffed him and taken his place in the Library. It would always be true. There were times when he was too afraid to admit it. This was not one of those times.

“Get out.”

_______________________

The twins returned bearing identical new faces that looked ten years older. There was no time for her anger or for her fear, there was no time for her questions. Finn and Charlie burst into the house yelling for her and she knew. Charlie grabbed Rory’s old sword from the mantle and ran out the back door. She sprinted after them, running full out, not caring who noticed her inhuman speed. They vaulted over the back garden fence and ran across the open meadow to the spot where a stream cut a steep cliff into the cool, stony heart of the countryside. The three of them skittered to a stop at the top of the cliff. Thirty feet below Anastasia danced and dodged, her eyes wide with terror, throwing white balls of time energies at a sharp-faced man with close-cropped hair who advanced on her, deflecting her attacks with a crackling red saber. She wore the stolen vortex manipulator but she couldn’t risk taking her eyes of her attacker long enough to escape.

 “Go home and get your brother and sisters out of here, go to your grandmother, New Year’s 2040, just like we talked about.” She took the sword from Charlie’s hand and leapt into the small gorge.

She landed directly in front of him, lifting her sword to block his downward swing. She dove into his mind, screaming with the pain of it. He was an angry swarm of bees, a red pulsing explosion of hate and shame. She was swept along in the raging waters, incapable of knowing where he stopped and she began. She felt his surprise; felt him tighten his grip on his sword and fight to push her out of his mind. No! Doctor please listen to me.

He kicked her savagely in the chest and she staggered backwards. “Anastasia, go!” One last fleeting look at her daughter who flashed away into time and space, then they were locked together - swords flashing, his face unrecognizable in his fury. Her body knew how to fight him; she’d been made for this. She’d always been able to read his intentions – the tiny shifts in his posture that signaled his next move – and this was why, so that she could face him, kill him. Adrenaline coursed through her system, flooding her body, waking the monster that slumbered deep in her heart. He lunged and she dodged, just in time, but he managed to elbow her in the face. She could feel warm blood running from her nose, but there was no pain – there was only the next blow to block and the next. It was an intoxicating dance and she smiled as the blood lust swelled through her body – threatening to drag her under. She held on to herself by her fingernails, moving only defensively to block or dodge, but never attacking him even though her body protested, straining against her with a will of its own. No, no she loved this man, she held on to this thought like an anchor as she was buffeted by the storm of his blows. She was so, so close to breaking, I must stop fighting him. With an enormous effort, River spun a few yards away and threw Rory’s sword hard so that it clanked to the rocky shore well out of her reach.

The Doctor charged her and she closed her eyes so she wouldn’t see the blankness on his face. She didn’t want to flinch or cry out she just wanted it to be over, so she screwed her eyes shut and stood there. He stopped suddenly in front of her, his sword inches from her neck. She could hear his ragged breathing and smell the smoke of distant burning planets on his jacket. From her left, came the unmistakable sound of a weapon being locked. River turned on the spot, to see one of her neighbors, a rancher she’d always liked, standing with his rifle trained on the Doctor. She threw her body between them just as a shot split through the cool air with a resounding crack.

River lay on the cold, grey stones and watched the color and speed drain out of the world. As if in slow motion, the Doctor leapt over her body and punched the rancher, knocking him out cold. He kicked the rifle to the side and came to kneel next to her. She smiled, remembering the last time she’d met this him, the way he’d knelt over her just like this.

“I’m always taking bullets for you.” She watched his face transform as the anger and madness drained out of him, leaving only the broken warrior she’d met on Sancleen. Not quite her Doctor, but not far from. He was talking to her, but River couldn’t make out the words and she was distracted by the way the sunlight glowed against the sharp angles of his face – there was something about that, something she needed to ask him. Did it always feel like this? Like being born? Lightening hot golden swirls enveloped her hands and he backed away. She held them to her face marveling as the fire ripped through her core, burning away her sadness and fear and love until all that was left was the burning.

And then she was standing up and facing him with a smile on her face. Oh, this was so much better. Her hands ran into her hair – the hair – it was just simply fantastic and she felt at home in this skin, suddenly everything she had to face felt easy, like she finally had her shit completely under control.

“Alright sweetie, let’s sort this mess out then, shall we?”

Chapter Text

London, 2048

He took her to her parents. Carefully skipping ahead to find an older Amy and Rory who would be able to cope with seeing their daughter, fresh from the clutches of the Silence. He stepped out of the Tardis first, wrapping Amy’s thin frame in his arms and whispering, “I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry” into her silver hair.

She looked up at him, the unspoken question written across her lined face. Then she caught sight of her the girl with flaming red hair and Rory’s eyes. There was no more need for explanations. Amy watched, as her daughter stepped gingerly out of a blue box onto the living room rug as if it might swallow her whole. Melody’s eyes darted around the room, assessing the exits. Amy’s gaze lingered on the bruises that encircled her daughters’ arms. She assessed Melody’s jagged haircut and the pronounced contours of her collarbone. As the Doctor watched, tears welled in Amy’s eyes, but she quickly turned her back on them and pretended to examine the view out the window. Hiding the damage must run in the family.

“Melody! You're here!”

Melody and Amy both jumped as Rory’s voice rang warmly from the front door. He hung his white lab coat on the wall and stepped into the living room smiling. His smile turned gentler as he took in Melody ’s appearance and his wife’s trembling hands.

“Is it one of those days...again? I’ll make some tea, then.” He walked past them into the cheerful kitchen. River and Amy had decorated it together, painting the walls a lemony yellow. Amelia, always her grandmother ’s favorite, had found mugs in a bright TARDIS blue. The Doctor’s shoulders still ached from the afternoon that he and Rory hefted the round table up three flights of stairs and placed it under the bay windows.

Now, Melody sat at that same table, twisting a napkin. She watched Rory’s every move, as he went through his quiet routine and finally handed her a cup of tea, sweet, with lots of almond milk and a splash of bourbon.

“Here you go, darling.” Rory handed her the cup which she sniffed before setting it back on the table with trembling hands.

“This is exactly how I take my tea.” Melody’s voice shook slightly, but the Doctor could practically hear her thinking, putting together the pieces. She understood that she had a future with the Doctor and that scared her. How would she feel about a future with the parents she lost?
Amy, who had finally entered the kitchen, picked up her cup and huffed at her daughter, “of course it is!” Amy softened her tone and smiled, “don’t you think your own father knows how you like your tea? Now, you’ll be staying a while, and that’s that.”

Melody sipped nervously at her tea before standing and pacing around the room. Suddenly, her eyes widened, and she moved like a sleepwalker towards the fridge, running her fingers lightly over the random collage of photographs: twin girls with shocking red hair embracing Rory; a roguish, teenage boy brandishing an ancient Roman sword. Finally, her fingers brushed almost reverently over an aged and tattered photo. In it was Amy, years younger, holding a tiny baby, whose delicate fingers curled around her thumb. The Doctor held his breath as Melody studied the photos, silently willing her not to recognize her children, not yet. But Melody wasn’t even looking at him; instead, she turned to her parents. “You had kids...more kids?” she asked, her voice plaintive and small.

“Nope.” Amy walked over and gently turned Melody by the shoulders until she faced her. She pushed a strand of bright red hair out of Melody's eyes, tucking it neatly behind her ear, “just the one.” She tapped the aged baby photo of Melody proudly. “The others aren’t my kids, but you are.” Amy moved to hug her, but Melody jerked backward and looked anywhere but at her mother. Amy just held steady and repeated, “you’ll be staying with us for a while.”

“I think I will,” Melody whispered, turning a tear-streaked face to Amy. “Mother?” The name held the hint of a sob. Amy opened her arms and Melody nearly collapsed into them, burying her face in Amy’s shoulders. “Please don’t let them take me again, please, please...I want...please, let me stay with you,” Melody began to sob in earnest.

Rory pushed away from the table and walked over to his girls, putting his arms around them both.“Shhh, shhh it's alright now,” he crooned into Melody’s hair, “you’re safe with us. You’re safe here.”

The Doctor watched in relief. He could feel her letting go, trusting them. This is what she needed now, not him. He smiled at them all proudly, his Ponds, and then slowly inched towards the Tardis. For once, he took off the handbrake and left as silently as a ghost. That’s what he was to her -- an apparition from her future, someone best put aside for another day. “That’s as it should be,” he said aloud to the old girl, who whirred contentedly, “Let’s go home.”

New Oxford, 3240
“Hi honey, I’m home.” The Doctor’s cheery voice echoed oddly through his house. Scowling, he stepped into the kitchen, squinting at the anachronistic paper calendar that Anastasia insisted on hanging on the fridge. This one had been a present from her grandfather; each month sported a different candy-colored race car. This month, February, featured a bright red Corvette. He checked again. No, this was right. He’d only been gone from New Oxford for a little more than a month. Where was everyone?

He made his way into the living room. The media station was blaring some local sporting event, and a half-eaten sandwich sat forgotten on the coffee table alongside an open bag of crisps. “Nobody’s supposed to be eating on the sofa,” he mumbled aloud to no one at all. The Doctor bent to give the food a sniff. Peanut butter and Nutella, Claire’s favorite. “Three days old,” he muttered, and then sniffed again, “well, three days and five hours.”

He sat down and switched off the game. He waited. No one came home.

Maldovar Station, 5330

“Sweetie, try to eat something.” River pushed a heaping mass of something greasy and salty across the table towards the Doctor, this strange warrior who would one day be her husband. He looked pale and gaunt, his sharp features made more pronounced by hunger and pain. He’d broken a couple of the fingers on his right hand. His left arm was scorched, he needed patching up. But first, he needed to eat.

“What is that?” The Doctor eyed the food skeptically. He was generally an adventurous eater, but everyone had their limits.

“Something Dorium recommended.” River shrugged and smiled conspiratorially, “it must be filling, judging by the evidence.” River inclined her head to the back booth where the massive (and surprisingly blue) man was tucking into his own dinner.

The Doctor took an experimental bite then smiled a wide, slightly manic, grin. “This is actually good!” River laughed at the way the goofy expression transformed his face - even his ears seemed to stick out a bit more when he smiled. ‘Oh,’ she thought, ‘I like this one.’

She let her thoughts drift back to that night on Sancleen. The way his face had transformed in other, predatory ways as she’d undressed in front of him. That was still in his future. It hurt, that little stab of knowledge that he’d see her again, but that these were her last moments with him, at least with this him. Better get used to it, River, she thought.

“My love, you know you can’t keep today. I mean the memory. It’s too dangerous.”

“I know,” he muttered with a frown. “Where did she go? That girl with the red hair? Those boys, I...I think I hurt them…” his injured hand was shaking so violently that he dropped his fork.

“They’re fine, I promise.” River took his hand in hers and gave it a gentle squeeze. Tendrils of golden light threaded from her hand through his, his bruised fingers healed and straightened. The Doctor startled, but River just held fast. “No, we’re all just a little bit immortal, remember?” She closed her eyes in concentration as golden light swirled up and around his burned arm. The Doctor watched the angry red welts fade away.

River released his hand and shimmied her shoulders in pleasure. “I’m sure Finn and Charlie are enjoying their new regenerations as much as I am.”

The Doctor noted the way River’s face softened as she spoke to him about the other Time Lords he’d encountered that day. He noticed the way the corners of her mouth tugged upwards as she explained that the boys he’d met were twins and that the girl with the red hair, Anastasia, was also part of a matched set. “All the twins are trouble,” she chuckled softly, lost in some private memories. “But, I do need to get back to them. They’re still just children.”

The Doctor stared hard at River, reaching out with his freshly-healed hand to grasp her smaller one. He turned her palm up and studied the golden energy that still throbbed along beneath her skin before asking a quiet question, “River, who are you? Who are they?”

“Exactly who you think we are,” she said kindly.

He positively beamed back at her, his grin splitting his face and making his preposterously large ears stand out even further. For a while, they sat there holding hands over a plate of 53rd-century junk food, smiling like absolute fools. Then, Dorium came over carrying a communicator.

“Doctor Song, I believe you have a call...on my private line...the one that absolutely no one knows about.” Dorium rolled his eyes as he shoved the sleek silver com into River’s hands. She took it with an apologetic glance and spoke softly, “Yes, what’s the matter?….well, mummy’s a tiny bit busy at the moment darling...no, everything’s fine, are you lot ok?...good...um hum, gran’s got a photo?...yes, I like the hair too…wait, what? Put one of your sisters on.” River’s voice jumped two octaves, “You are supposed to be in 2037, just for once could you get the timezone right?...Yes, I’m angry, do you have any idea how dangerous this is?...No, I can’t, obviously, unless you want me to rip a hole in the space-time continuum….Seriously, why are we even having this conversation….” River held the phone away from her face while at least six voices all spoke over one another in a cacophonous outburst. “Call. Your. Father.” she barked into the com and then deftly switched it off, placing it on the table between them.

She cut her eyes towards him. “These are definitely your children,” she sighed with an exasperated laugh.