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It starts as a worrisome, niggling thought in the back of her mind. She barely even notices at first, far too busy marveling at the love of her Doctor and basking in the glow of their time together. So much time. What had once been a devastating rumor of their future has become a gift she never expected and River wakes every morning with a smile on her face.
Granted, morning is still night on Darillium but a girl can hardly be expected to go twenty-four years without a little beauty sleep. She falls asleep with the Doctor’s arms around her and the stars outside their window and she wakes to the very same. Is it any wonder it takes her a while to notice that something is a bit, well, off?
The Doctor, bless him, wouldn’t notice anything amiss until she hit him over the head with it and she can’t help but feel grateful for his obliviousness now. Crumpled on the bathroom floor in an evening gown and heels, River heaves into the toilet and mutters curses between retching because her idiot husband had refused to obey the clear warning of a locked door. He hovers behind her now, one of his hands warm and steady at her back and the other holding her hair away from her face.
“I hate you,” she groans, swatting at his leg with a clammy hand when her stomach finally settles. “Go away.”
“Yes, dear.” The Doctor reaches around her to flush the toilet and River glares weakly at his smirk. “Just give me another twenty-three and a half years. I’ll be out of your hair.” He pauses, tilting his head. “Might take me that long just to find my way out of that nest.”
“You are so not getting any tonight,” she grumbles, reluctantly allowing him to help her to her feet.
“Pity.” He hovers until she shoos him away and even then he doesn’t go far, watching her make her way to the sink to rinse out her mouth. “Must have been that second course at dinner. I told you not to try anything that could be considered a reproductive organ.”
For some reason, reproductive reverberates in her head like a damned gong but River grips the sink and ignores it, forcing a cheeky grin as she glances over her shoulder at her husband. “But honey,” she purrs. “That would make you ever so lonely.”
It secretly thrills her that he’s very nearly impossible to ruffle these days. He merely arches one of those heavy eyebrows at her and says in that gruff Scottish voice she finds all at once endearing and arousing, “I’m sure you could make an exception.”
“Only for you, darling.”
A smile twitching at his mouth and his eyes crinkled with amusement, the Doctor backs her into the sink and River quickly forgets all about that niggling worry. And the Doctor gets lucky after all.
-
The worry is back again when she wakes hours later and as much as she tries to cling to the Doctor and contemplate all the creative ways to coax him out of his dreams, it’s impossible to concentrate. She slips out of bed without waking him and dresses without turning on a light, sneaking out into the night and the TARDIS waiting for her in the yard.
Twenty-four years had seemed like an awfully long time to live on a planet without acquiring a more permanent residence but the Old Girl is always waiting for them, ready to take them off-planet and bring them back seconds after they’d left. The Doctor seems determined to stretch out their time together and River can’t think of one good reason not to let him. She doesn’t have to pretend to be selfless anymore. Her husband knows exactly what lengths she’ll go to for her own benefit and strangely enough, instead of sending him running in the other direction, it seems to turn him on.
River smiles softly to herself as she slips into the TARDIS and shuts the door behind her. He always did like a bad girl. Silly of her to think he wouldn’t fall head over feet for a notorious criminal with no conscience. She’s exactly his type.
The Old Girl greets her with a happy hum and River murmurs a soft hello, trailing her fingertips over the console. “I’m afraid I’m in a bit of trouble, Mummy. Tell me I’m wrong.” She sighs, curling her hand around a lever and bowing her head. Squeezing her eyes shut, she pinpoints the small, barely distinct murmur – the consciousness that doesn’t quite feel like her own. Terror fills her and she draws in a sharp breath, her eyes watering. “Tell me I’m being paranoid. Please.”
She can hear the TARDIS running the scans but she doesn’t feel brave enough to watch them in progress. She stands there with her head bowed and her teeth biting into her lip so hard she starts to taste blood but she doesn’t look up until the TARDIS monitor dings. Even then, it takes her a moment to gather her courage. Muttering, “Please, please” under her breath, she finally risks a peek at the monitor.
And promptly wishes she hadn’t.
Positive.
Numbly, River turns away and sinks into the jump seat. She stares into space and the Old Girl whirrs soothingly around her. Twenty-four years. They’ve only just begun and they’ve already buggered it all up. Her eyes sting and she clenches her jaw, kicking half-heartedly at the console. The little consciousness that is not her own hums on in the back of her mind.
It’s how the Doctor finds her when he finally comes looking. “You know, if you want to take a trip, the best way to go about it is to mention it to your husband instead of sneaking off and waiting for him to get a clue. I spent an hour thinking you were in the loo!”
River doesn’t respond, watching blankly as he approaches the console. She hadn’t bothered turning off the monitor and it only takes him a moment to realize there are readings displayed on the screen. His little smile fades as his eyes scan the results. River grinds her teeth together and waits for the inevitable panic attack. Maybe his will finally set off her own. They could go and do something death defying and ignore this unwelcome news together.
She watches him, waiting, but the Doctor doesn’t do what she expects. She keeps forgetting this body of his is full of surprises. He turns to her, brows raised, and asks, “Hungry?”
“Honestly?”
“If you can help it.”
“I feel like throwing up again.”
He cracks a faint smile at that, holding out a hand to her. “Tea, then.”
Hesitantly, she slips her hand into his and the Doctor pulls her up and into him. Still holding her hand, he uses his free one to cup her cheek and gazes at her with that look in his eyes she’s still getting used to – that pure, unfiltered tenderness that takes her breath away. She swallows, turning her face into his palm. “Don’t fret, my River. Please.”
“But -”
“Hush.” He eyes her sternly. “Tea first, then talking.”
Instead of leading her out of the TARDIS and into the little house they’re temporarily calling their own, he tugs her out of the control room and down the corridor to one of the many kitchens on board. This one is small and cozy, the same one where she used to retreat with Amy on late nights when her mother couldn’t sleep. The Doctor ushers her into her usual seat and while part of her wants to snap at him for treating her like she needs to be handled with kid gloves, she’s still too terrified to do anything but sink into her chair and glare at him.
He calmly endures her silent ire, puttering about the kitchen preparing her tea. She can’t help feeling a little resentful that he’s handling all of this so much better than she is. She keeps waiting for him to throw the kettle across the room or mutter under his breath but he keeps being fine. She narrows her eyes, fingers twitching against the table, and wonders if he’d keep being fine if she threw her tea at him.
Under her watchful eye, he pours her cup and adds two sugars before spooning in just a bit of honey – exactly the way she likes it. She softens at that and it only makes her more resentful. She’s scared and angry and ready to shoot something. She terrifies the truly terrifying, makes half the universe cower in their boots, but one carefully prepared cup of tea from her husband can turn her into a simpering girl with a crush. It’s infuriating.
“So,” the Doctor says, setting the cup and saucer in front of her. “You’re pregnant.”
River flinches, scowling at the steam rising from her cup. “Not so loud.”
“You think if we whisper it’ll give up and go away?” Brow furrowed, he leans in and lowers his voice. “Worth a shot, I suppose.”
The urge to throw her scalding tea in his face is growing but River stamps down on the instinct quickly. “This isn’t funny.”
“No, it’s not,” he agrees solemnly. His blue eyes soften and crinkle as he studies her, taking in her white knuckled grip on her teacup and her wide eyes, her trembling mouth. “But it’s not the end of the world, either.”
“It might as well be,” she snaps, hating the way her voice shakes. “Twenty-four years, Doctor. We’ve only just begun and now we’re going to spend it looking after someone else.”
He hums faintly and his expression gives absolutely nothing away as he observes, “That’s a rather bleak outlook for a new mother. Might want to save it for the terrible twos.”
Her teacup clatters against the saucer and she stares at him with dawning horror. The fog in her head slowly starts to dissipate and mother penetrates it like the unwelcome glare of morning light through window blinds. She can feel the color draining from her face and distantly registers the Doctor’s concerned expression but acknowledging any of it is impossible. Mother. Her? River Song, psychopath and terror of mass murderers everywhere – a mother?
“River?”
The Doctor reaches out to touch her hand and she jolts away from him, standing so quickly her chair nearly topples over. “I can’t be a mother.” She looks down at him wildly, the panic a cresting wave in her chest threatening to pull her under. “I can’t – you’ve seen what I’m like. I’ve got no maternal instincts whatsoever and no bloody moral compass to speak of. I was raised by monsters and engineered to kill you. How can I raise a child? It’s impossible. Anything I touch would only end up a fucked up mess.”
When she turns on her heel and flees, the Doctor doesn’t try to stop her. She doesn’t really expect him to. He’s hardly the type to come after her. He proved that rather spectacularly after Manhattan. River very nearly runs back to the control room and throws herself at the console, searching desperately for the hidden compartment where she keeps her vortex manipulator. By the time she hears the Doctor’s footsteps, she already has it strapped around her wrist.
Traveling by manipulator during pregnancy is stupidly dangerous but she inputs coordinates and disappears in a flash. It doesn’t take her long to find trouble and she throws herself into it with gusto, leading a bloody rebellion in the Isop Galaxy that lasts six weeks. She comes home when it’s over, singed and tired but less angry, less willing to run.
When she appears in the garden of their little place on Darillium, the Doctor is waiting for her. He’s sitting on the porch steps with a guitar on his lap, fiddling idly with the strings. He looks up as she approaches and while she can’t quite bring herself to look directly at him, she knows he’s studying her intently – her sun-browned skin, the blood still in her hair, the barely noticeable bump beneath her shirt. He sees everything but he doesn’t say a word.
River picks at the blood beneath her fingernails. “How long has it been?”
“Two hours.”
Despite her best efforts, tears of relief sting her eyes. As frightened as she is of what’s to come, the last thing she wants is to miss one moment with the Doctor. “Good,” she breathes, closing her eyes. “That’s good.”
Setting aside the guitar, the Doctor pats the space next to him on the steps and reluctantly, River joins him. She smells like dust and death but he takes her hand anyway and doesn’t let go. “Can we talk now?”
She looks away. “What is there to say? I found out I was pregnant and jumped right into the middle of a warzone, Doctor. I’m hardly mother material.”
Running his thumb over the back of her hand, the Doctor replies glibly, “I respectfully disagree.”
River blinks, startled, and peers at him uncertainly. “Then you’re an idiot.”
“Yes, possibly, but that doesn’t make me any less right.” At her disbelieving stare, he shrugs. “So you were raised by Silence and a forgetful caretaker. Now you know what not to do. And you do have a maternal instinct, I’ve seen you with Amy. Yes, you’re a bit amoral but you’ve got all the best bedtime stories. You don’t give a damn about the universe but you love me, don’t you? This baby will be half me. That has to count for something, doesn’t it?”
Damn him. River bites her lip and feels her eyes water at the sight of his small, hopeful grin. Damn him for making this sound like it’ll be the easiest thing they’ve ever done instead of the hardest. He squeezes her hand and she breathes out, “I’m scared.”
He snorts softly. “And you think I’m not?”
She frowns. “You certainly don’t act like it.”
“Just because I didn’t bugger off to shoot things doesn’t mean I didn’t panic.” He lifts his brows and eyes her meaningfully. “You weren’t here for the last two hours. Little warning, don’t go into the squash court on level seven. I was having a moment.”
Stifling a bout of laughter at his easily offered grin, River squeezes his hand gratefully and drops her gaze to stare at their entwined fingers. “So,” she says, sniffling. “What do we do now?”
“It’s your choice,” he replies evenly. “Always.”
“But you want this.” It isn’t a question but he nods anyway, hesitantly like it might make her run again. She fights back the urge to do just that. “How can you want this?”
“Because it may be half me – unfortunate – but it’s half you too. How could I not want every piece of you the universe is willing to offer?” He sighs, cupping her trembling, blood-stained hands in his. He doesn’t even seem to mind, bending his head to brush his lips reverently over her knuckles. “Can I tell you a secret?”
“All of them,” she whispers, watching him fondly.
“My last body,” he begins haltingly, swallowing. “He thought about this more than he’d have liked – a family. With you.”
River breathes in sharply, her eyes stinging. “You never said.”
“Course I didn’t.” The Doctor frowns. “I didn’t think it was possible. But here we are, with world enough and time. You’re looking at this all wrong, River. It isn’t a curse on our time together. It’s another gift.”
She manages a faint, terrified smile and looks into blue eyes filled with excitement for the future. For a moment, she allows herself to feel it too. “One last adventure?”
The Doctor nods, smiling when she strokes her bloodied hand down the side of his face. “Our best one yet.”
-
She’s terrible at being pregnant. Whoever had started those rumors of glowing radiance and being at one with the little parasite growing inside her had been a sodding liar and she’s going to find them and destroy them slowly – as soon as she’s back to a relatively manageable size again.
The Doctor, bless him, does his best to distract her when he senses her impending panic – usually with sex. It’s the one thing about this entire miserable pregnancy she actually likes. However she may feel about her changing body, the Doctor makes his own feelings perfectly clear by taking any opportunity to ravish her.
Most days, working off her frustration with him in their bed is enough to satisfy her but when it isn’t, she makes him pay. She sends him out for food she claims she’s craving – food nearly impossible to find on Darillium – and steals the TARDIS while he’s gone. With the Old Girl on her side, she always manages to find something reckless to do, something to prove her life isn’t over just because she happens to be growing a person.
If it were up to the Doctor, she knows she’d be spending the duration of her pregnancy on bed rest. When she doesn’t want to slap him for hovering, she has to admit it’s a little endearing. He’s excited enough for both of them. Excited enough to make her feel guilty for not feeling a thing as her belly rounds out and the baby begins to kick. She’s heard the stories – the bonding of mother and child, the unconditional love. She should feel something.
That she doesn’t only confirms what she has always known and the Doctor has been determined to ignore – she’ll never be anyone’s mother. She’s still stewing in her own failure when the Doctor drops a heavy stack of paint swatches down onto the kitchen table and nearly upends her teacup. River stares at it balefully and waits for him to explain himself.
He helps himself to one of her chocolate biscuits and says, “Thought you might like to decide on a color for the nursery.”
It’s quite possibly the most domestic sentence she has ever heard him utter and it makes her want to scream. She grits her teeth behind a tight-lipped smile and picks up her tea, sipping it in pointed silence.
“Is blue a bit too on the nose?” He flips to another swatch and frowns at it. “Looks like the inside of a Slitheen.”
He’s infuriatingly content, studying paint swatches and talking about their child, and River is reminded briefly that he’s done all of this before. It was a long time ago but he’d still done it. This is hardly his first rodeo. For some reason, that only makes her want to snatch the swatches from him and bean him over the head with them. Must be the hormones. She primly sets aside her tea and stares at him. “How do I know you’re not going to get bored and bugger off once this thing comes out?”
His hand freezes, index finger lingering over the forest green swatch. Slowly, his blue eyes lift from the page to gaze across the table at her and he looks so patient and so betrayed that she regrets the question at once. It isn’t his fault he’s married the least maternal woman in the universe. It isn’t his fault she’s terrified and taking it out on him just because he has the audacity to be happy he’s having a baby with his wife.
But River isn’t big on apologies so she sticks to her guns and affects a glare instead. “You can’t blame me for wondering. Your track record isn’t exactly full of glowing commendations, sweetie. When the going gets tough, you tend to get going – in the other direction.”
He stiffens, leaning back in his chair to watch her with sharp, bright eyes. His voice is a low rumble and she fights back a shiver when he speaks. “I hope you’re not talking about Manhattan. I may be old, River, but I do remember that you left me. Not the other way round.”
“Is that what you think?” She laughs, soft and cold. The baby kicks inside her, as if in silent protest. She smoothes an absent hand down her stomach and feels her smile waver. “I may have been the first to leave that TARDIS, darling, but I was certainly not the first one to walk away. That honor belongs to you.”
He looks away, jaw clenched, and part of her celebrates the innocent joy fading from his eyes. She hates that part of herself but it’s so deeply ingrained into who she is she knows if she tried to get rid of it, she would have to claw and dig and scoop out whole parts of herself just to get to it. For once, it’s blood she isn’t willing to spill. The Doctor stares blankly at the paint swatches spread out on the kitchen table and says softly, “I was grieving.”
She scoffs. “And I wasn’t?”
His eyes flicker up and stare into hers, boring into her so resolutely she wonders how he bears what he must see. “If you were, you certainly didn’t want me to know it.” He raises an eyebrow and amends, “But I suppose it was difficult to trust someone you thought didn’t give a damn about you.”
River glowers at him, slamming a fist against the table. The force of it rattles her teacup and sends a few paint swatches fluttering to the floor. “How many times do I have to tell you I was having a bad day?”
“Hell of a bad day – you married a robot and managed to convince it you had a shit husband while it scanned your fucking mind,” he snaps. “What’s a bad week for you? Full-on slaughter?”
“Shut up.” She scowls, kicking his shin beneath the table. His eyes narrow but he doesn’t kick back. For once, this baby is working to her advantage. “You really think I would have spent two hundred years with a man I thought had never loved me? I love you, honey, but not even I could survive that. I’m not some moony-eyed companion desperate for any scrap of affection you’ll toss at me – if you hadn’t shown me every day that you cared then I would have left you a long time ago.”
“But you did, River,” he says softly, his eyes calm and sorrowful once more. “You did leave.”
“And you didn’t come after me,” she whispers. “I’m part human, darling – part Rory Williams. And the other part of me is a psychopath certain she isn’t capable of giving love, let alone receiving it. Is it any wonder I doubted you?”
He scowls. “You’re still doubting me. Right now, and I want you to bloody well stop.”
River laughs softly, shaking her head. “I’m not doubting you, you idiot. I’m doubting me.” She shrugs at his questioning glance, offering him a soft, apologetic grin. “I just happen to be taking it out on you.”
He frowns for a moment, then brightens. “Oh. That’s alright, then.”
River rolls her eyes.
Reaching around the paint swatches and her teacup, he grasps her fingers in his hand and looks at her with such faith that it settles somewhere between her hearts and buoys her. “You’re not going anywhere.”
She shakes her head, eyes misting over, and says, “Neither are you.”
They paint the nursery yellow, like the sun their baby won’t see.
-
Her worries aren’t miraculously soothed by bright paints and baby furniture, not with fantastic, distracting sex, and not even by the birth of their daughter. It takes her a week to hold the child.
The Doctor is a natural and even in his current, grumpy incarnation, he loves children. He gets up in the middle of the night when she cries and plays with her during the day and patiently waits for River to stop gazing at their offspring like they had spawned a fearful demon instead of a little girl.
Tiny, delicate wails wake her in the middle of the night and River stares at the Doctor for a moment, waiting for the noise to wake him. Several minutes pass and he doesn’t stir but the shrieking down the hall continues uninterrupted. She stays huddled under their blankets until she realizes that she’s River Song cowering away from a crying child. If only her enemies could see her now.
With dread in the pit of her stomach, River slips from bed and pads down the hall. The crying grows louder the closer she gets to the nursery and by the time she’s peering hesitantly at the crib from the doorway, the baby has worked herself up into a pretty decent screech. She’s almost impressed.
She forces herself from the door and steps into the room, walking toward the crib like a woman walking to her doom. Her little girl squirms beneath the blankets, her tiny face screwed up in her small but fierce anger. Her dark curls are matted against her head and her delicate fists bat uselessly at the air. If she could free her feet from the blanket, she’d probably be kicking those too.
River smiles softly down at her, pleased. “You’re a fighter,” she whispers. “I like that in a person.” Tiny arms reach out for her and River blinks down into the crib, startled. “Oh, no. You don’t want me. I’m not -”
She glances hopefully over her shoulder, half expecting the Doctor to be standing there waiting to scoop up their newborn and pop a bottle into her mouth. The doorway is empty.
Biting her lip, River holds in her breath and closes her eyes, reaching blindly into the crib and lifting up the child. She holds the shrieking bundle out in front of her for a moment, uncertain. Slowly, she pries open her eyes and stares at the baby. Her baby. Her crying baby. If there’s one thing she will not stand for, it’s anything that belongs to her being neglected.
Carefully, she holds the child to her breast and tries to hum, the way the TARDIS does for her when she’s upset. She rocks back and forth, swaying in place, and gradually, miraculously, the cries lessen. A tiny fist curls around a piece of her hair and a soft, cooing mouth presses against her collarbone, slack with sleep.
River blinks down at the dark head of baby fine curls against her chest and the lullaby stalls in her throat, caught by the new lump forming there. Tenderly, she smoothes a hand over her child’s back and says softly, “Not so scary now, are you?”
Her little girl sighs in her sleep, curled trustingly against her, and River Song melts.
-
There are exactly four people she cares about in this universe and two of them are dead. The only two left are a Scottish old man with cross arms and eyes that grow soppy when he looks at her, and a little girl with her father’s frown and her mother’s hair.
Standing on the balcony at Darillium’s finest restaurant, River stares at the loves of her life and fights back a wave of longing. She’d give anything to be at the beginning again, with a baby and twenty years to raise her. Twenty years to make love to her husband and row with him and star gaze out their bedroom window at night.
The sky is lightening now, the night almost over. Twenty-four years gone in the blink of an eye. She still can’t quite bring herself to believe this is really it. Somehow, she finds the strength to smile when her daughter glances over her shoulder and beckons her with a bright, “Mummy, come look!”
“Coming, my love.” She blinks away the sting in her eyes and steels herself, pasting on a grin as she approaches the bouncing little girl peering at the sky for the approaching light and her taciturn husband doing his best to keep it together. River slips her hand into his and squeezes, her smile growing genuine and warm when he glances at her with gratitude. “Are you ready?”
He shakes his head silently, swallowing, but their daughter practically squeals. Raven – it had only seemed fitting to call her such, their little rebellion against the inevitable end, their little one raised in the darkness and never knowing the touch of the sun on her face – has been brought up on stories of the light. She’s been waiting her entire life for the sunrise, never understanding that for her parents, it is an end and not a beginning.
As Raven points excitedly toward the approaching dawn, River looks to her husband. He stares at the sun peeking over the horizon like if he tries hard enough, he can send it away and give them more time. She swallows thickly and asks, “Where will you go?”
His eyebrows draw together and his expression grows pinched, the way it always does when he’s doing his best not to cry. He clears his throat and tightens his grip on the balcony railing. “I thought I might take her to Gallifrey,” he says hoarsely. “She could attend the Academy.”
River forces a smile. “She’ll love the light.”
“She’ll miss the stars.”
“She can’t have both.”
“She might,” he says, and it sounds like a promise. “Someday.”
She breathes in, watching him lift her hand to his mouth and kiss her knuckles. “Not everything can be avoided, remember? Not forever.”
“But I’m me,” he murmurs, giving her a pained, teasing smile. “I always find a loophole.”
“Things end, Doctor.” She cups his cheek in her hand, rubbing her thumb softly over his skin. “They have to.”
He turns his head and kisses her palm, shutting his eyes. “Not always. Not love.”
“No,” she whispers, smiling. “Never that.”
Raven tugs at her skirt and grateful for the distraction, River turns away. Her little girl peers up at her, excitement evident in her little face. Technically, Raven is twenty-three but by the standards of the Time Lords, she’s still a child. She has the mind and body of a six-year old girl. River tries not to dwell on the unfairness of never seeing her little bird grow an inch taller.
Instead, she pushes back the melancholy to give her daughter a bright smile, stooping to lift her up. Settling the girl on her hip, she turns back to the Doctor and takes his hand. He clings to it like together they can stop a new day from dawning. They stand huddled together, their little family, and watch in silence as the sun comes creeping over the horizon, bathing the landscape in its soft, golden glow.
Raven shuts her eyes against the light, turning her face toward its warmth and grinning widely. “Mummy,” she breathes. “Do you feel that?”
River nods, though her little girl can’t see it, and swallows. “Yes, my love. I feel it.”
Raven squints against the brightness and giggles, turning away. Her blue eyes find River’s and she looks to her mother for answers, like she always has done. Like she’ll look to her father in the days to come. “What happens now?”
As the first day in twenty-four years dawns, River smiles at her daughter and promises, “You’ll live happily ever after.”