The Doctor's Futures Part One: Hitching a Ride Home

The Doctor's Futures Part One: Hitching a Ride Home

A Doctor Who Fanfic by DSDragon

Disclaimer: Doctor Who belongs to the BBC and the various producers and writers who have contributed to the actual show over the decades.  The author of this story has not received—and will not receive—any compensation for the writing of the story.

Timeline Note (and spoiler warning): This story sort of goes off on a bit of an AU between “The Power of Three” and “The Angels Take Manhattan.”  I actually started writing it between “Asylum of the Daleks” and “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship” though.  The only thing that’s really different with the River/Doctor thing is that in this story, the Doctor knows that River is already a Professor while Amy and Rory are still alive and well in Leadworth.

There are major spoilers for pretty much anything you can name in the new series, but especially for the ends of seasons one, two, four, and six, as well as a few references to other episodes along the way.

Author’s Note: This is a single story written from three separate points of view.  I had originally intended to post it in two different formats: first, in the way I intended it to be read, which is the way it is here; and second, with each character’s point of view put into its own chapter, so that readers could choose which way to read it.

However, due to the final scene being from a completely different fourth character’s point of view, I did not think that would work.  Personally, I prefer this way anyway, because it’s easier to remember the other characters’ points of view if you read each scene in each point of view one right after the other.

I have a bit of trouble with the speech patterns of half of the characters in this fic, but hopefully, one of the character's thought processes should at least help to explain why another character doesn't sound like they did on the show. The other character is the 11th Doctor-or any Doctor, really. I'm just not that good at writing rambles, and this is my first WhoFic, so I don't have nearly the capacity for technobabble as others who have been writing Doctor Who fanfic for years. So, please forgive the mistakes I've made in the dialogue. I hope you enjoy the story anyway.

Also, there are ‘ships in this fic, both blatant and implied.  Listing them before the beginning of the story would give a major plot point away, so I will refrain from doing that here.

+ + + + +

After dropping Rory and Amy off at home for a few days’ rest after their latest death-defying adventure, the Doctor had gone to find River Song for their trip to see the musical falls of Cheteline IV—and maybe go dancing.  The doctor mused that “finding River” lately was a bit more difficult ever since she’d been paroled from Stormcage, but it only took some judicious use of the psychic paper and her Vortex Manipulator for them to be on their way.  Professor Song had insisted as she first set foot on the TARDIS that she was going to drive this time, and nothing the Doctor could do would change her mind.  After syncing their diaries, they were off, River immediately engaging the stabilizers.

So the Doctor was a bit bored.  Every time he tried to reach over and cancel those boring, “blue stabilizers,” she’d slap him on the wrist and shoo him from the console, banishing him to the captain’s chair.  He’d even tried distracting her with a make-out session, but she was having none of that.  He swore the woman had eyes in the back of her head; he just couldn’t get to the controls, and it was no fun travelling in a ship that didn’t bump or jerk you about.

He drew the line at letting off the parking break, though.  As soon as River had reached for the lever, he’d made that a condition of her getting to drive by herself—that the noise the TARDIS had made for seven hundred years, or however long it had really been—he’d lost track somewhere around his fifth or sixth regeneration—would not be disturbed.

All that being said, because of River’s insistence on a “nice, smooth, relaxing ride in the TARDIS,” the Doctor was rather surprised, therefore, when a jolt—followed immediately by some very definite bumps, and maybe even a heave—went through the ship.

“Now that’s more like it!” he said, smiling wide at his sort-of-wife.  He knew she wouldn’t let him go completely bats after all.  Then he noticed the somewhat frantic (or was that just annoyed?) look on her face.  “What’s wrong?”

“I didn’t do that, Doctor.  You mean you didn’t?”

“When have I had the chance?  You’ve been watching me like a hawk this whole time.”

River paused, and her expression became thoughtful and then almost reluctantly flattened to something approaching ‘reasonable’ before she turned to check some readouts. “The stabilizers are still on; something strange is going on though.  I’ve never seen these kinds of readings, and she won’t talk to me.”

At River’s admission, the Doctor reached out with his mind to his ship, not thinking it at all odd that the TARDIS didn’t want to talk to River.  But then, he didn’t know just how often the ship usually did talk to her.  The familiar song came into his mind, and he quirked his lips, raising an eyebrow. “No damage, all systems functional,” he said after receiving the rather generic telepathic update.  “Is there somewhere we need to be, then?”

A most emphatic affirmative sang through his mind just as an alarm on River’s side of the console started blaring.

He walked around to look, and said, “What’s that noise?”

“It’s an alarm, Sweetie,” River said, her eyes clearly broadcasting to him that he shouldn’t have thrown away the manual.

“Yes, I know that.  But which alarm is it?”

River concluded her Look long enough to glance at the blinking display.  “Inter-dimensional Proximity Alert,” she announced.

The Doctor gaped.  “But that alarm only goes off when a TARDIS has found a bridge between alternate or parallel realities and is about to cross over, which is impossible—unless she wants both dimensions to collapse—with only one Time Lord on board!”

The TARDIS gave a sudden lurch at that, and he watched River grab onto the edge of the console for balance.  She snarled at him as though he’d forgotten their anniversary or something (not that they technically had one, since they’d been married in a timeline that never really happened—but did), “What about with two, then?”

“Well, with two it would still be tricky, not to mention bumpy, but—”

The Doctor blinked as he realized how that sentence would end.  It’s possible.  Then, he realized that there actually were two beings in the TARDIS capable of flying his ship into another dimension, provided she could find the right path into one.

Sometimes, he forgot River was not just a human; she had, after all used up all of her regenerations and he knew the time and place of her death.  So, he supposed that his subconscious mind might have been causing him to forget the unusual circumstances of River’s conception, birth and existence.  After all, he’d eventually run out of nights in which he had not visited her in between when she’d first proposed killing Hitler and her eventual death, and it would be like experiencing the Library all over again.  What did it matter that she was unique, that she was the first—and quite probably, the last—human Time Lady?  If he let himself think of that, then he’d probably go mad.

After all, what was a Time Lord on his last regeneration?  A Gallifreyan with two hearts and a fast-approaching expiration date, or like a human on his or her one and only less-than-a-century.  And so it was with River.  At least, if he didn’t think about the Time Lady part, he might be able to keep what was left of his sanity long enough to mourn and move on.  Thinking about River’s nature led to hope, and that would only end in madness, especially since he knew there would be none.

Giving himself a shake back into the here-and-now, he let go the railing which he’d used to stand up from the captain’s chair, clapping his hands as he made his way to the console between the TARDIS’s shimmies.

“Right then, River Song.  Up for a visit to another universe?”

+ + + + +

Was it really too much to ask for a smooth ride in the TARDIS with the Doctor?  Sure, Professor River Song liked the adventure and thrills that being with him usually entailed.  Tonight, however, she just wanted to be able to set the controls and leave the console—perhaps in favor of a nice, long, flirtatious “Hello,” while they drifted leisurely through the Time Vortex on the way to wherever it was this time.  The Doctor said that these “musical falls” of his weren’t actually musical, in that there wasn’t any special thing in the water that created music, but the composition and natural formation of the rock wall behind and the ground beneath the cascade created some sort of melodic and harmonic resonances in the valley.

Personally, River was hoping to find out that the whole setup was some massive ancient alien artifact that did the trick, so they’d made a wager, and she had insisted on not letting him drive to Cheteline IV.  She found his attempts at taking back the controls rather amusing, actually, and graciously gave in to his insistence that the sound of the parking break grinding was a beautiful noise, and since he’d left it on for the better part of a millennium without hurting the TARDIS, if she wanted to drive, she was not allowed to release it.

After a few of the Doctor’s attempts at reneging on this deal of theirs, the TARDIS gave a lurch, which jolted her out of her reverie.  She glared at her husband for his cheerful interference before noticing that he was still sitting in the captain’s chair, where he’d been banished after his last failed “mutiny.”

Still, he shouldn’t have been cheering.  She forgave him a little when he asked what was wrong—but only a little, because he wasn’t really paying attention.  Pretending she didn’t know, she said, “I didn’t do that, Doctor.  You mean you didn’t?”

“When have I had the chance?  You’ve been watching me like a hawk this whole time.”

River paused, and decided to let that go before checking the blue button.  It was still depressed. “The stabilizers are still on; something strange is going on though.  I’ve never seen these kinds of readings, and she won’t talk to me.”  River hoped the Doctor would not notice the hurt in her voice.  He didn’t seem to, but he did have that uncanny knack—especially among her family—for bringing things up later which no one knew he had noticed at the time.

He said something about “somewhere we need to go,” but River was lost in her desperation to reconnect to the ship and didn’t care enough to follow up on the cryptic fragment of a comment.

Just then, an alarm claxon blared, and the Doctor asked the obvious, “What is that?”

In a further attempt to hide her confusion and what was quickly becoming devastation at the TARDIS’s rejection, she assumed an amused and slightly sardonic tone.  “It’s an alarm, Sweetie.”

“I know that, but which one?”

Right, she was the one at the console; therefore, she was in charge of status reports.  A quick look to her left, and she found the blinking red light.  Finding the label which, like all the other labels would have usually been either entirely missed (due to their extreme smallness) or ignored (because they were in Gallifreyan) by every other person, alien or machine who had ever travelled with the Doctor, she read its caption: “Inter-dimensional Proximity Alert.”

“But that alarm only goes off when a TARDIS has found a bridge between alternate or parallel realities and is about to cross over, which is impossible—unless she wants both dimensions to collapse—with only one Time Lord on board!”

“What about with two then?” she snapped while hanging onto the edge of the console as the ship shook again.  River wished that the Doctor wouldn’t keep ignoring the fact of her existence as the first—and at this rate, probably the only—human Time Lady.

“With two, it would still be tricky, not to mention bumpy, but—”

He cut himself off, and River watched the realization pass over his features.  He blinked no more than a second later though, and stood up between shakes of the TARDIS.  Clapping his hands together and joining her at the control console, he said, instead of finishing his previous sentence, “Right then, River Song.  Up for a visit to another universe?”

+ + + + +

When he saw River reaching for the screen, he chided her, saying, “Where’s the fun in knowing where we are before we step outside?”

“Wouldn’t you at least like to know whether or not we’ll be poisoned the second we go beyond the TARDIS’s shielding?”

He was most definitely not going to admit that she had a point, but he did say, “Oh, all right, but no peeking at anything else.”

A quick check verified that the air was, in fact, breathable.  Actually, according to River, it was almost exactly the same composition of oxygen, nitrogen and other elements as that of Earth’s, back in their own universe.

Really, he couldn’t figure out what was making his wife so cautious, or reluctant to just jump into whatever happened.  It wasn’t like her.  There was no time to ask about it now though.  They had a whole, brand new universe to explore.  Not to mention, those kinds of talks with his very own curly-headed psychopath made him want to run and hide and find something that was only scary.  Like a Dalek.

With a shrug at his train of thought, the Doctor leapt to the door.  “Let’s see where we are, shall we?”

He opened the left-hand door just wide enough to glimpse the world outside with his right eye, and saw—

--A park with sculpted stone slabs sticking out of the ground?

He shut the door and turned his head to speak to River again, thinking that the place somehow smelled familiar.

“We’re in a graveyard,” he said.

Just to verify the proof of his eyes, he took one more peek, shutting the door even quicker this time.  Then he turned fully to the console and took a step toward it before asking, “Why are we in a graveyard?”

He was sort of puzzled when River’s eyes widened and she drew her gun, pointing it strait at him.

His confusion lasted only a moment, however.   Just then, a heartbreakingly familiar voice that came both from behind him and from out of memories he hadn’t wanted to look at for two centennials said, “Probably because, even across dimensions, the TARDIS can sense just when and where I need you, Doctor.”

+ + + + +

Rose Tyler stood at the new-filled grave of her late husband, unable for the moment to shed a single tear.  The chilled autumn air played in her still-blonde hair and rustled the black pantsuit she had worn to the funeral, but Rose did not so much as shiver.  They were all gone now; he had been the last member of her once-large extended family.  The rest had either died or left her long ago.  How would she go on without him?

Just as that question crossed her mind, a grinding wheeze disturbed the solemnity of the graveyard.  Thinking it probably an hallucination brought on by grief, and not daring to hope it was real, she watched the TARDIS materialize in front of her, not twenty feet to her right.

Still not certain she had not gone mad, Rose walked silently—tiptoeing was for silly teenagers, after all, and she hadn’t been a teen in ages—to the side of that wonderful blue box.  She stretched out a hand to touch it, but before even a fingernail could reach the faux-grain on the faux wood exterior, the door which did not house a disconnected telephone opened.  It did not open far, just a mere sliver, before closing again.

Rose was startled, but recovered quick enough to press her ear to the side of the box.  (Oh, most definitely, wonderfully, real!)  Inside, an unfamiliar, muffled, yet distinctly male voice said, “We’re in a graveyard.”

A pause in which Rose thought, Well, that’s rather obvious, and then, “Why are we in a graveyard?”

Taking that as her cue and realizing whose voice it must be, Rose walked the two steps to the front of the box and took the small key from around her neck, where she had kept it all the years of her marriage.  It was the matter of a moment, despite her lack of recent practice, to unlock the door, and it pivoted on its hinges as silently as she remembered while she stepped inside.

She barely registered the changed interior, or the older-looking, curly-haired blonde pointing a gun at her before she said, “Probably because, even across dimensions, the TARDIS can sense just when and where I need you, Doctor.”

+ + + + +

The first thing the Doctor did—after he got over the shock, of course—was to yell at his ship.  Or rather, at the time rotor, which was the closest he could get to some piece of the TARDIS small enough to be considered yell-at-able.

“And again, I say, ‘Way to give me guilt!’”

The next thing the Doctor did—again, after getting over the shock, there was just that much of it he had to do it twice—was to tell River to put the gun down.

But River wasn’t in the least bit inclined to listen to the Doctor tonight, or rather, today, considering the sunlight throwing shadows on the ground outside.  “Who are you, and how did you get in here?” she demanded.

“I have a key, see,” said the woman who at this point he was beginning to think might actually be behind him, since if she was haunting him, River wouldn’t have been able to see her.  Not that he believed in ghosts, not at all.  He turned, eyes locking onto a face he thought he would never see again, as she continued, and he couldn’t help but finish her sentence for her.

“As for who I am, my name is—”

“—Rose Tyler.”

+ + + + +

Yes, the new voice definitely belonged to the Doctor.  There were only two other people in the control room with her, and she did not believe for one moment that the Doctor would ever regenerate female.  Not to mention, landings were occasions.  Every passenger on the TARDIS would be in the control room.  If they were the only ones here, there was no one else on the ship.

Speaking of females in the TARDIS, the one who wasn’t standing in her shoes was talking.  Oh, and pointing a gun at her.  She had nothing on a Dalek though, so Rose stayed calm, wondering how long it had been for the Doctor.

“Who are you, and how did you get in here?” the strange woman demanded.

Thinking it rather obvious, Rose showed off her key and then started to introduce herself.

When the Doctor turned toward her—and what on Earth was he wearing?—Rose watched the other woman’s face scrunch up, the arm holding the gun falling slowly to her side.

Unable to bear seeing her own emotions for the husband she had just lost, for some reason, mirrored on this strange woman’s features, Rose began, only to be interrupted by the Doctor, “As for who I am, my name is—”

“—Rose Tyler.”

+ + + + +

They had landed.

They had landed, and the TARDIS would not talk to her, would not tell her why they had suddenly taken a detour right out of their own universe, and River couldn’t stand the silence in her mind where the ship had been since the day she had first met the Doctor.

Fighting unexpected tears at the alienation and thinking ironic thoughts at the aptness of the word she’d mentally chosen, River pulled the monitor toward her.  If the TARDIS wouldn’t tell her directly, she’d just have to find out the wheres, whens and whys the old-fashioned way.

When her husband protested, she came up with some bunk about not wanting to be poisoned outside, but really, she already knew that would not happen.  Nearly twenty years she had been in and out of that prison, and not once on any night she had travelled with the Doctor had the TARDIS landed them somewhere they couldn’t at least get into a habitation dome before running out of shielding.  But she still reported her findings to the Doctor, keeping her face neutral all the while.

He wasn’t scared—not in the least.  He had that kid-in-a-candy-store look he always got before a new adventure, only more so now than even the time when she had finally been able to reveal her true identity to him.  Like the big kid he sometimes resembled, the Doctor bounded to the doors and opened the left one just a crack before shutting it again.  He was so adorable sometimes, especially when he was confused, which he most definitely was when he looked back over his shoulder at her.

“We’re in a graveyard,” he announced, then took another quick look out before turning fully toward her and asking, “Why are we in a graveyard?”

Apparently, he didn’t notice the door opening for a third time behind him, because he put his own hands up when she drew her gun and pointed it over his shoulder at the Intruder, who also did not seem to notice the gun pointing right at her.

The Intruder’s declaration that the TARDIS would sense her need for River’s husband just made her angry, which she supposed was better than the hurt and loss she’d been experiencing for the last few minutes, at least.  But that was beside the point.  The ship tried to soothe her—she would be having none of it though, after it had blocked her out like that—and the Doctor said something about guilt and putting the gun down, but that wasn’t going to happen until River got some answers.

“Who are you, and how did you get in here?” she demanded.

Seemingly unfazed, the other woman—who, River noticed, also happened to be blonde—put out a hand in which she held a familiar, silvery object.  “I have a key, see?” the Intruder said with an accent that was a little bit Cockney, but not like the Cockney had been picked up over the natural course of meeting people who spoke with that accent.  Rather, it was like this woman’s natural Cockney had been covered over by a somewhat manufactured posh speech which this Intruder could not possibly be old enough to have phased in so completely, even if she had been taking elocution lessons since River’s husband had last seen her.

“As for who I am,” the Intruder spoke again.  “My name is—”

Even before the sentence was finished, River knew.  She had heard the stories, had even begged the Doctor to tell them to her a time or two.  He’d shown her all his faces and told her about all of the people, aliens and tin dogs with whom he had ever travelled.  None of those former companions had ever scared her nearly as much as the thought of this one had, though.  This one wasn’t dead, and had not left him of her own volition or because the Doctor had had to go somewhere she could not or had gotten bored with her.  She just hadn’t been accessible.  Or rather, she had not been accessible, until tonight.

Back when he had first told her the story, River had wondered what she would do—what her husband would do—if this particular former companion ever found a way to return to their universe again.  River laughed bitterly to herself that her own presence would make it possible to bring back the one person who could possibly threaten her relationship with the Doctor.

Professor River Song’s heart broke as the Doctor—her Doctor—interrupted the Intruder’s self-introduction to say, “Rose Tyler.”

+ + + + +

Pete’s World.  That’s what he’d called this place, back when he’d been younger, and ruder, and just as much not-ginger.  That was why it had smelled so familiar; it had just been centuries since he’d last been here, so the Doctor had not been able to place it.

She was talking, and he found it surprising to realize he hadn’t thought of her in at least a century and a half—certainly not since that day in the 1940’s when River had poisoned him.  He also didn’t feel the soul-searing pain of her loss now that she was here to remind him that she still existed.  If he were honest with himself, he hadn’t really felt that pain since shortly after his latest regeneration, or at least not as strong as he remembered it feeling.

He had known his personality, his likes and his dislikes would change when he regenerated.  Well, he would have known it, if he had dared to hope he wasn’t really about to die for once and all at the time, but he had not fully comprehended, even after going through the process nine times before, that his feelings for her could be changed so much in such a short span of hours.

He still loved her, and he had missed her, but all that time as well as the inevitable change of personality that came with regeneration had, thankfully, helped him stop being so downright, miserably in love with her.  He thought clearer now, was less reckless, did fewer things he wasn’t proud of, and because he had regenerated, he was able to do and be all those things without her.

As he had realized only a few seconds before, she was talking.  He tuned back into her voice just in time to catch her disparaging his wardrobe.

“Are you wearing suspenders?” she asked, stressing the last word as though the accessory in question were some horrible crime against fashion.  She continued, “And just what in the name of Rexicoricofallapatorius is that monstrosity around your neck?”

Ah, a question he could answer.

“It’s a bow tie,” he said.  “I wear a bow tie now.  Bow ties are cool.”

Her laughter didn’t make his hearts soar quite as high as he remembered, but it still made him smile.

“Same old Doctor,” she said.

“Very old,” he agreed.

“And yet,” she countered, “New, new, new.”

“Touché.  And now, Rose Tyler, I have one question for you.”

“Just one, Doctor?  I find that extremely difficult to believe.”

“Oh, there are more,” he said, “but this one is very important.”

“All right, what’s that then?” she challenged, hands on the hips of her uncharacteristically all-black pantsuit.

“Rose Tyler, why are we in a graveyard?”

+ + + + +

He was staring at her.  He’d regenerated, and he was staring at her, and already Rose could tell that he wasn’t in love with her anymore.  Oh, there was affection—maybe even a kind of love—in his staring orbs, but time and regeneration had tempered it, changed it into a wistful, nostalgic thing.  Given her recent loss, Rose was perfectly all right with that, and decided to tease him about his new “fashion” sense.

“Are you wearing suspenders?” she asked.  “And just what in the name of Rexicoricofallapatorius is that monstrosity around your neck?”

This Doctor was much more “kid-in-a-candy-store” than even hers was, and his answer was childishly redundant, fitting with the image: “It’s a bow tie.  I wear a bow tie now.  Bow ties are cool.”

He reminded her so much of her eldest son when he was six that she couldn’t help but burst out laughing.  When she saw the soft smile on his face, she sobered and said, “Same old Doctor.”

“Very old,” he answered.

Recalling the first off-world trip she’d had with her last Doctor so many years ago, she said, “And yet, new, new, new.”

“Touché.  And now, Rose Tyler, I have one question for you.”

“Just one, Doctor?” she countered, raising an eyebrow.  “I find that extremely difficult to believe.”

“Oh, there are more, but this one is very important.”

She put her hands on her hips and asked, “All right, what’s that then?”

She knew it was going to be something that was really quite trivial in the grand scheme of things, but Rose had not expected this “extremely important” question to knock the breath out of her.  She had just noticed the Doctor’s childlike redundancy; why had she not expected that repetition to stop when the topic changed?

From the corner of her eye she watched the other woman move to the controls, and had a brief millisecond in which to wonder what she was doing.  Then Rose’s smile faltered, and the grief of all her losses came crashing back like a vice on her heart when he asked, “Rose Tyler, why are we in a graveyard?”

+ + + + +

For once, River was thankful that the Doctor wasn’t looking at her, because she didn’t think she could stand him to watch her fall apart.  In all the years she had known him, all the years they had been married, not once had the Doctor said that he loved her.

He had been enthusiastic in their flirtations, and he had never denied her the privilege of calling him her love, but he had never returned the words.  In fact, before they’d married, he had even gone so far as to say he embarrassed her.

In her distress, she had forgotten the look on his face when she’d told him she would suffer more than an entire universe if he died, and remembered only that she’d had to kiss the Tessalecta—a Doctor suit—on her wedding day, instead of the actual Doctor.  She remembered also his deer-in-headlights expression when he’d called Amy the “mother of the bride,” like he couldn’t believe he was marrying River.

She had no delusions that he had not been the one calling the shots on the Tessalecta that night.  Whether he’d rigged up some crazy autopilot from paperclips and twine or he was just telling the crime ship’s crew what to do made no difference.  No one else could have gotten just the right words, put them in just the right order.  No one else, without consultation with the Time Lord himself, could have pegged his mannerisms so thoroughly.  If anyone had been putting words into his mouth, she would have been the first to know.

After the “bow ties are cool” speech, River decided that someone should at least start getting ready to leave this place, though she wished the Doctor would tell the Intruder—Rose—to go back to the world he had left her in before they got under way.  With a shaky breath, River started a pre-flight diagnostic, something her husband never bothered with.

There was no damage, but apparently only two Time Lords at the controls were not enough to keep things stable on the way between dimensions.  Breaking through without collapsing both realities had taken a lot of extra power without the extra hands.  The TARDIS needed a couple of hours to recharge before the return trip.

Unable to bear another minute in the same room as Rose Tyler, River finished her diagnostic, and still ignoring the TARDIS’s attempts at reconciliation, made her way out of the control room.

Barely managing to put one foot in front of the other on her way down the corridor, she heard the Doctor ask, “Rose Tyler, why are we in a graveyard?”

+ + + + +

After more than a millennium of running, hiding and fights to the death, not much could surprise the Doctor anymore.  He was not just surprised, but completely floored at Rose’s answer:

“Because I’ve just become a widow.”

He must have looked even more shocked than he felt, because she reminded him that time moved slower in their home universe than in Pete’s World.  Thinking about her involvement with this universe’s version of Torchwood, and about both of their inability to just let aliens invade when they came, he figured his doppelganger had probably been sent to an early grave by the Cybermen or something equally fatal.

“What year is it back home?” she was asking him, and he had to think about it before he could answer properly.

“Oh, I know this one.  Saw a newspaper on the doorstep when I dropped off the Ponds earlier.  Now what was it?  Yes, that’s it.  Two thousand, twelve.”

“Only four years since you last saw me?”

“No, no,” he hurried to reassure her.  Her face had begun to crumple again, and he realized she didn’t know how long he’d spent alone before his latest regeneration.  “Four years since you were last on Earth.  It’s been a few centuries since I last saw you.”

Visibly relieved, she asked, “When did you regenerate?”

“About half-way in, I think.”

“How many times?”

“Just the one.”

“Good.”

“How did I die?” he blurted, unable to hold in the question a moment longer.  “Or rather, how did he die?”

She sniffled a bit, and her eyes got misty as she answered him.

“Old age,” she said, tone full of irony, and he didn’t really understand what she was asking when she said, “Is ‘after I dropped off the Ponds’ some super-secret Doctor code for something?” because his brain was already fully occupied with trying to figure out how long she’d been here.

He looked at her more closely.  She still looked young, but if his other self had died of old age—which wasn’t likely to have happened anytime soon after he had left the pair of them standing on Dalig Ulv Stranden the last time, despite the doppelganger’s brand-new case of humanity—then she was a lot older than she looked.

He must have taken too long to answer whatever she had just asked, because she was waving the hand still holding her TARDIS key in his face.  “Earth to the Doctor.  Come in, Doctor.”

“Sorry, what?”

“‘Dropped off the Ponds’?”

“Oh!  They travel with me.  Amy Pond and Rory Williams.  River’s parents.”

“River song?”

Now that was just freaky.  “How do you know that?”

“Well, he had your memories, didn’t he?  And Donna met her too, remember?”

“Right!”  That had been nearly four hundred years ago; he had somehow forgotten that Donna Noble had been in the Library with him.

“He never did figure out who she was, though.  Was that her, the blonde with the gun?”

“Yeah, that’s her,” he confirmed.  Throughout this exchange, he had yet to figure out why the other him had died so soon.  Could it be—and this was an extremely unlikely possibility—that all of his previous centuries had all of a sudden caught up with the human body, and he’d died right then?

No, she’d reminded him just a moment ago that time moves faster in this universe, so it couldn’t have been that soon, since four years had passed back on her home Earth.  There was nothing for it.  Without more evidence, he wasn’t going to suss out this conundrum.

“Rose, what year is it here?” he asked.

There was no hiding the disbelief at even just her continued existence, much less at her early-twenties face, as she answered, “Twenty-eighty-nine.”

+ + + + +

Shoving the grief back down her throat, Rose answered the Doctor’s query with the blunt and unvarnished facts: “Because I’ve just become a widow.”

So many different expressions crossed his face, and she just had not had enough time to become acquainted with this new Doctor’s personality to discern all of the individual emotions behind them yet.  She did manage to catch shock, confusion and disbelief though, and figured she should probably elaborate.  “Remember, I told you before that time moves faster here.  For the longest time, it made me a bit dizzy, but then I got used to it.  What year is it back home?”

It took him a moment to answer, and she realized when he did why he’d been so surprised.  Back home, it had been only four years since Davros, and he probably thought she was too young yet to be a widow because her husband had lived to death.

A hope she had never thought to have began growing in her mind.  Maybe she could visit Jack, or Mickey, or anyone else she’d ever met.  It might be a bit weird, her looking exactly the same as when she was twenty-one and them thinking her dead, but she might even be able to sneak in a visit with Shareen.

Just then, another aspect of the short time frame popped into her mind.  Only eight years, and he had already regenerated again?  Horror tingeing her voice, she asked, “Only four years since you last saw me?”

“No, no,” the Doctor corrected her.  “Four years since you were last on Earth, yes, but it’s been a good few centuries since I last saw you.”

Relieved at this new and improved answer, she let out her breath.  Because she just had to know, she asked, “When did you regenerate?”

“About half-way in, I think.”

“How many times?”  Please don’t let him answer me like he did Sarah Jane.

“Just the one.”  Thank you, Universe.

“Good.”

“How did I die?”  The question seemed torn from his mouth, like he hadn’t wanted to ask.  He seemed to have given resisting up as a bad job though, because he continued, “Or rather, how did he die?”

“Old age,” she said, matter-of-fact, remembering all the times they had never thought that would even be a possibility over their years at Torchwood.  Then, because he had mentioned it while telling her the date, she asked, “Is ‘after I dropped off the Ponds’ some sort of super-secret Doctor code for something?”

Ah.  He was staring off into space again.  She waved her hand, noting absentmindedly that she still had yet to put her key away, and said, “Earth to the Doctor.  Come in, Doctor.”

He blinked.  “Sorry, what?”

“‘Dropped off the Ponds’?”

“Oh, they travel with me.  Amy Pond and Rory Williams.”  She wondered why he called them “The Ponds,” if Rory was a Williams, but didn’t get the chance to ask before he continued with, “River’s parents.”

That name.  Her husband had told her that a woman named River had died the first day he met her.  It couldn’t be—“River Song?”

“How did you know that?”

“Well, he had your memories, didn’t he?  And Donna met her too, remember?”

“Right!”

“He never did figure out who she was, though.  Was that her, the blonde with the gun?”

“Yeah, that’s her.”

Finally, as though he’d just realized the subject had changed without informing him, he asked the question she had been prepared to answer all along: “Rose, what year is it here?”

“Twenty-eighty-nine,” she said.

+ + + + +

River did not get far from the control room.  About two steps past the point where no one inside the room was going to see her, her knees failed her.  Back against the wall, she sank to a sitting position, wiping the tears away as soon as they fell.  She could still hear bits of the conversation, though most of what they said was muffled.  One would think, River mused, that a room outfitted mostly in metal and glass would echo more.

It seemed they were catching up on the news.  River was rather skeptical when she heard Rose say that she was a widow.  That girl couldn’t be older than twenty-five.  Although, working for Torchwood could possibly have something to do with the short life span of her husband—whoever he had been.

And that was another thing.  Who was he?  The Doctor and Rose kept mentioning “him,” confusing River all the more.  Also, if Rose was married, why didn’t she correct the Doctor when he called her Rose Tyler?”  The muffled conversation was just too cryptic to figure out.

River’s eyes flew open wide when Rose said her name on the tail of a question, as though verifying her identity.  They were talking about her now?  Oh, there’s a thing to jump for joy over.  Not that they even noticed she was gone.

Apparently, the Doctor had been just as surprised as she was at the sound of her name on Rose Tyler’s lips, because he asked, “How did you know?”

“Well, he had your memories, didn’t he?  And Donna met her too, remember?”

Realizing this conversation constituted a major spoiler—who in the world was Donna?—and not caring in the slightest, River decided to have a lie-down.

Just as she regained her feet, she heard Rose proclaim that the year on this particular version of Earth was 2089, but she was too far gone in her miserable exhaustion to go back into that room and demand more answers.

Weary and broken-hearted, Professor River Song, Archaeologist walked down the corridor to her parents’ room.  Even without them there, she felt comforted as she sat in the cushioned armchair by the bed.  She set the clock on her Vortex Manipulator to alert her when the TARDIS would be ready to go back home, and did not hear the lullaby the ship played for her as she drifted into a dark and dreamless slumber.

+ + + + +

“But that’s—” the Doctor spluttered.

“Eighty years since you last were on Bad Wolf Bay?  Yes,” Rose said.  “After all that with Davros and everyone, it’s like time sped up or something.  That could be why both he and I were dizzy all the time for months afterward; I don’t know.  We got used to it though, and none of the medical doctors here could figure out the cause.  I hadn’t felt anything like that before, so maybe what we did to stop Davros sort of sent this universe off on its own, letting time get exponentially faster, or something.”

The Doctor shrugged.  “Doesn’t matter now.  But really, eighty years?”

“Eighty years.”

“Eighty years?”

“Yes, Doctor, eighty years.”

“But you—” he gestured to his face, then pointed at her own.  “You don’t look a day older than the last time I saw you.  And you outlived him?”  That should not have been possible.  Even though his duplicate had been part human, and the part of him that was still Time Lord had been on one of the last few of its regenerations, he still should have survived Rose.  And here she was, a century older than the last time he saw her—at least twenty years older than he had expected her to be when she passed.  She had outlived the man who should have been the oldest person on this particular Earth before he died, and the Doctor could not credit it.

Meanwhile, Rose had nodded in answer to his question and walked past him and up the stairs to the Captain’s chair.  When she sat in it, the Doctor leaned against the railing, finally looking away from Rose’s impossibly young face.  It was then he noticed that he and Rose were the only ones in the room.

“Where’s River?” he asked over something Rose was saying about when she really stopped aging.

“She went down the corridor a few minutes ago, looking a bit upset.”

The Doctor turned back to the woman he hadn’t seen in centuries.  “Upset about what?”

“How should I know?  I just got here.  But whatever it is, it got worse when I came aboard.  She flicked a few switches, pressed a few buttons, then walked out, looking like I felt when we first ran into Sarah Jane way back when.”

The Doctor’s eyes widened.  “But you and Sarah Jane got along great.”

“Not at first.  At first, I was a bit afraid of her.  She had this whole history with you I’d never heard word one about—”

“—But I’ve told River all about everyone I’ve ever travelled with,” the Doctor interrupted.

“Did you tell her how you felt about me back then?”

“Well, yeah,” he answered, matter-of-fact.  “I couldn’t leave out such a big part of who I used to be.  And besides, she asked.”

Rose scoffed, “Since when do you tell people you travel with about yourself, or your past, eh?”

“I don’t.”

“But—”

“—River doesn’t travel with me.  Her parents do.”

She looked at him as though he’d grown a third arm or something.  “What?”

“If River doesn’t travel with you,” Rose asked, “then what’s she on the TARDIS for?”

“Well, until we got pulled here, I was going on a date with my wife.”

Rose blinked.  She opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it.  After one more blink, she asked, “Your wife?”

“Sort of.  We got married in a timeline that never happened after I kissed the bride.  Long story involving an astronaut, Richard Nixon, the Doctor in a Doctor Suit, and lots of timey-wimey stuff.”

“Sounds interesting,” Rose said with a smile.  “But I think some of those stories might have brought out some insecurities when River was suddenly faced with my presence here.”

“River’s never been insecure in her entire life,” he retorted.  “He told you how she introduced herself that day in the library—like she owned the place, and didn’t care one whit to doubt.”

“But you see, Doctor,” Rose chided him.  “Here you’ve been, telling your wife about every single adventure you’ve ever had with anyone, including the woman you used to love.  Now, knowing you, I’d be willing to bet forty quid that, in all that sharing and story-telling, not once have you told her you love her.  Am I right?”

How did Rose do that, read him so well, even in this body that was completely new to her not twenty minutes ago?

“Well, I married her, didn’t I?  And not accidentally, like I’ve done with some of my other companions.  You’d think she’d know how I feel.”

“In a timeline you said never happened afterward.  You are the king of mixed signals, Doctor.  Also, a girl likes to hear the words every now and then, you know.  Especially before her husband’s ex-flame mysteriously shows up and he can’t keep his eyes off the other woman.”  She quirked an eyebrow at him, arms folded.  “That’s bound to shake the faith of even the most secure of women.”

Oh.  “I’d better go find her,” he said after a moment.

Rose shook her head.  “No, you’ll only make it worse.  I’ll go talk to her; it’ll be like I’m on Sarah Jane’s end of the conversation this time.”

“Rose Tyler, how did you get so wise?”

“I’d say it came with the quasquicentennial, but you’ve had at least nine times that now.”  They shared a laugh, the Doctor a bit surprised that she knew the word for a hundred-twenty-fifth anniversary—although, she was never stupid, just lacked knowledge (a circumstance which, he mused, usually fixes itself with learning and time)—then Rose continued, standing.  “I’ll go find her.”

The Doctor started to nod, but then shook his head vigorously instead.  “Bad, bad idea.”

“How so?”

“Well, River’s the type to—literally—shoot first and ask questions later.”  He gulped.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Rose said, making her way toward the rest of the ship.

The Doctor groaned, hoping against hope that his wife wouldn’t shoot Rose on the spot.  Or worse, shoot him for letting Rose go after her.

+ + + + +

When the Doctor spluttered at the time difference, Rose answered with, “Eighty years since you last were on Bad Wolf Bay?  Yes.”  Then she remembered how she and the human Doctor had felt so sick to their stomachs for months afterward.  Her mum hadn’t mentioned feeling anything similar, so at the time Rose had thought the two of them had some sort of alien bug or something.  She must have been speaking her thoughts aloud, because the Doctor—the actual, fully-Time Lord Doctor—shrugged.

“Doesn’t matter now,” he said.  “But really, eighty years?”

“Eighty years.”

“Eighty years?”  Okay, the repetition was starting to go from nostalgic to annoying, fast.

“Yes, Doctor.”  She rolled her yes.  “Eighty years.”

“But you—”  Ah.  She had forgotten about her appearance, which was understandable, since it was so normal for her to see her own face in the mirror; she did not even blink at the lack of wrinkles or white hair anymore.  When he gestured to his face and then pointed to hers though, she remembered that it was not normal for the years not to show on her face.  “You don’t look a day older than the last time I saw you.  And you outlived him?”

She nodded, but the Doctor was with his thoughts and did not seem to notice until she walked past him to the Captain’s chair.  She had decided that standing just inside the doorway for what promised to be a rather long conversation was a bit silly.  So she sat in the only chair available, and the Doctor followed, leaning against the railing next to it.

“Where’s River?” he asked.

So he hadn’t noticed the other woman leaving the room then.  “She went down the corridor a few minutes ago, looking a bit upset,” she answered.

The confused and concerned look he turned on her to ask why River was upset was like her own Doctor’s—in both of the forms she had loved when she was young—that her vision became a bit misty for a moment.  Shaking off her grief in order to continue the conversation again, she answered, “How should I know?  I just got here.  But whatever it is, it got worse when I came aboard.  She flicked a few switches, pressed a few buttons, then walked out looking like I felt when we first ran into Sarah Jane way back when.”

Rose wondered to herself if River had known what she was doing, and if so, how long she had to have been travelling with the Doctor in order to do it with such confidence.  The thought was relegated to the back of her mind when the Doctor mentioned how well she’d gotten on with Sarah Jane, however.

“Not at first,” she reminded him.  “At first, I was a bit afraid of her.  She had this whole hisory with you I’d never heard one word about—”

“—But I’ve told River all about everyone I’ve ever travelled with,” the Doctor interrupted.

“Did you tell her how you felt about me back then?”  Rose had long ago come to accept that the Doctor really had meant to complete the sentence his part-human counterpart had finished the second time she had been at Bad Wolf Bay.  Given that, a theory began to take form in her mind about why River might have been upset.  That theory was confirmed when the Doctor answered in the affirmative.

“I couldn’t leave out such a big part of who I used to be.  And besides, she asked,” she elaborated.

Remembering how long it had taken for even her part-human husband to start opening up, Rose scoffed, “Since when do you tell people you travel with about yourself, or your past, eh?”

“I don’t.”

“But—”

“River doesn’t travel with me.  Her parents do.”

Okay, now she was confused.  She must have looked it too, because he asked, “What?” with a bit of indignation creeping into his tone.

“If River doesn’t travel with you, then what’s she on the TARDIS for?”

“Well, until we got pulled here, I was going on a date with my wife.”

Rose was glad she had perfected her poker face—and that she was currently sitting down—because she suddenly began to doubt what she had been so certain of just the minute before: that if her part-human husband had not existed, the Doctor would have let her stay with him.  After all, if he could marry this new human, a daughter of his companions, then did that mean he would not have married her, or that he would have?  Instead of opening that can of worms—she’d had a good life with her own Doctor, and did not want to taint those memories with “what ifs”—she just asked him to confirm River’s relationship to him.

The answer just made her more confused, and the elaboration made her want to hear the rest of the story.  But that could wait until later.

“Sounds interesting.  But I think some of those stories may have brought out some insecurities when River was suddenly faced with my presence here.”  Thank goodness for Torchwood’s university tuition program—and their ability to forge identity papers and education records—and those night-time psychology courses at Oxford!

“River’s never been insecure in her entire life.”

So insightful when it comes to life, the universe and everything, yet still so clueless in relationships, Rose mused at the Doctor’s answer.

“He told you about how she introduced herself that day in the library—like she owned the place, and didn’t care one whit to doubt.”  It wasn’t a question.

“But you see, Doctor,” Rose chided him.  “Here you’ve been telling your wife about every single adventure you’ve ever had with anyone, including the woman you used to love.  Now, knowing you, I’d be willing to bet forty quid that, in all that sharing and story-telling, not once have you told her you love her.”

She didn’t need to ask if she was correct, because it was obvious in the way his whole countenance lit up when he talked about River—the same way her own Doctor had looked at her for the last eighty-odd years—but she asked anyway.

“I married her, didn’t I?”  And there was that pang, that “what if?” again.  Firmly, she reminded him of what he had said regarding the timeline on his wedding day, and then said, “A girl likes to hear the words every now and then, you know.  Especially before her husband’s ex-flame mysteriously shows up, and he can’t keep his eyes off the other woman.  That’s bound to shake the faith of even the most secure of women.”

“I’d better go find her.”

She put out a hand to stop him, shaking her head.  “No, you’ll only make it worse.  I’ll go talk to her; it’ll be like I’m on Sarah Jane’s end of the conversation this time.”

“Rose Tyler, how did you get so wise?”

She smiled.  “I’d say it came with the quasquicentennial, but you’ve had at least nine times that by now.”  He laughed with her, and then she continued, “I’ll go find her.”

He nodded, then his eyes widened and he looked a bit scared for some reason before shaking his head in the negative.  “Bad, bad idea.”

“How so?”

“Well,” he hedged, “River’s the type to—literally—shoot first and ask questions later.”

Banking her safety on the fact that River had, in fact, asked first earlier, Rose said, I’ll keep that in mind,” as she made her way to the rest of the ship.  She asked the TARDIS to point her in the right direction, and heard the Doctor groan behind her.

+ + + + +

The TARDIS must have agreed with Rose’s assertion that she should talk to River, because she had only walked a few yards down the corridor before she felt the sudden urge to look to her right.  Hanging on the door she had found, she saw a heart-shaped frame holding a photograph that looked like it had been cut out of fabric.  It depicted a young couple making a silly, cuddly pose for the camera, and Rose wondered just how long the Doctor had been travelling with River’s parents for there to be a picture of them looking so young on the door of their TARDIS bedroom.

That was who this couple must be, for the TARDIS to lead her here in her search of River, since the woman probably didn’t have a room of her own, being the Doctor’s wife and all.  Rose doubted that River would want to go somewhere he was likely to intrude—like his own bedroom—when she needed space from the Doctor.

Putting those thoughts aside, Rose knocked.

There was no answer, so she knocked again, this time putting her ear against the door.  No voice came from beyond the panel, but she heard a soft rustle, as of someone moving on a mattress.

Just as she was about to call to River, the door swung open.  “Go aw—”

The sentence was cut off, and the woman inside the room backed up a step, drawing her gun to point at Rose so fast she couldn’t even track the movement.  “What the hell do you want?” River said, tone husky, and Rose noticed the red rims under her eyes and the dried-up tear tracks on her cheeks.

Rose’s hands had gone up the moment she saw the gun again, and she kept her voice soft and steady as she said, “I think you and I need to talk.”

“I’ve nothing to say to you.”  The hostility in the air coming from inside the room was palpable.

Rose nodded.  “All right.  Would it help if I told you I’m not here to take the Doctor from you?”

The snort River let slip was answer enough.

“Really, I’m not.  After all, I’ve had a lifetime with him already, you know, and he’s regenerated anyway.  Not to mention, he’s your husband, and I’m in mourning for mine.  I’m really not in a fit state for any new romances just now.”

At some point during Rose’s explanation, River had let her arm fall, and Rose watched her holster the gun.

“What are you talking about?” River asked.  “How is two years a lifetime?”

“I’ve had eighty years with my Doctor.  He just died three days ago, and I buried him this morning.”  She couldn’t help the choking sob that made its way past her throat just then, but she squashed the rest of the grief back into where she could keep it and deal with it later before she concluded with, “Hence, the graveyard.”

“That’s impossible.  He’s never gone back to your universe before now.”

“I mean the part-human version.”  At River’s even more perplexed look, Rose thought, Oh, the idiot!  He didn’t tell her about the metacrisis.

“I think he might have left out a few details when he told you about all that happened with Davros.”

“Rule One: The Doctor lies,” River said, nodding as though she knew what Rose was talking about.

“I thought Rule One was, ‘Don’t run off.’”

“That’s the Doctor’s rule.  You and I both know no one actually ever follows that rule anyway.”

“True.  And I guess your rule does fit in this case, even if it is just a lie of omission.”

River’s face softened just that little bit, and Rose pressed the advantage.

“Is there somewhere here we can go to talk?  I’m not sure I’d be comfortable in your parents’ bedroom.”

Blinking as though she had forgotten in which doorway they were standing, River asked her, “Is he still in the control room?”

“Last I left him.”

“Then let’s not go outside.  We’ll just have to find a room he won’t think to look in.  That’ll be a bit difficult, since he had to delete a fair number of old ones to escape a TARDIS-eater a while back, but I think we can manage.”

“I guess my room’s probably gone, then.”

“No, all of the old Companions’ rooms are still there.  The TARDIS wouldn’t let him eject them, so he got rid of rooms like the pool and the squash court, among others, first.  And my parents’ old room.  But that was only because he could make a new one with them right there to make it the way they wanted again.”

“All right.  Would you rather go to the library or to my room then?”

“He’d probably find us faster in your room.”

“The library it is.”

They moved as one down the corridor, still talking.

“So, what do you mean, a part-human version of the Doctor?” River asked.

“He told you about his ‘fightin’ hand?’”  She looked to the side to catch River’s nod when she didn’t answer aloud.

“Well, it turns out, our old friend Jack Harkness found it—and I really should ask the Doctor how Jack is alive, because I thought he’d died right before the Doctor regenerated on the Gamestation.  But anyway, when Jack came back aboard while the Doctor was travelling with Martha Jones, he brought that old hand back with him.”

“Go on.”

“Fast forward a number of months for him—and a couple of years for me, and the Daleks stole the Earth and attacked in droves.  He was talking to Donna—that’s Donna Noble, by the way—about a message I’d given her to give him, and she must have told him something about me being right down the street, because he turned and started running my way.  When both of us were about halfway to the middle, a Dalek shot him.”

River gasped.  By this time, the pair had reached the library, and the other woman sank into one of the leather wing-backed chairs in the reading area.

“He regenerated right then?”

“Sort of.  We—Jack, Donna and I—managed to get him into the TARDIS, and he started to regenerate.  I mean, flames came out of his head, arms and feet and everything.  But a few seconds later, still doing that shooty flame thing, he turned his arms toward the console, and it stopped.  He still had the same face, too.”

“How?”

“Said after the damage the Dalek had done was healed, he didn’t need the rest of the regeneration energy, so he channeled it into his old hand, which had been sitting right under the console for months.”

“Clever.”

“Of course.  He’s the Doctor.”

“There’s more, isn’t there?”

Rose nodded before continuing.  “A little while later, Davros tried to destroy the TARDIS, with Donna inside.”  River’s eyes widened, so Rose paused and waited for a question, but the other woman stayed silent.  “Donna was panicking, and she had fallen on the floor and saw the hand bubbling in its case.  She touched it, and all that residual energy exploded into another Doctor, but with one heart instead of two, and a bit of Donna’s own personality thrown in.”

“You’re talking about a human-Time Lord metacrisis,” River interjected.  “But that’s impossible.  The human wouldn’t be able to handle the mind of a Time Lord—Donna’s brain would have burned up and killed her.”

“She seemed fine when she and the Doctor left me and my Doctor at Bad Wolf Bay.”  It was the first time since stepping onto the TARDIS that Rose had named her husband, and it seemed right that it should be to this woman, the wife of the Doctor.

“It wouldn’t have been immediate,” River explained.  “But I think the Doctor may have found a way to stop her dying.  He mentioned giving Donna’s grandfather something to give her as a wedding present later on, but it’s like she just up and left after that stuff with Davros.  He didn’t mention travelling with her again after that.”

Rose’s husband had never mentioned that, but he’d only had the Doctor’s memories up to the point of the aborted regeneration.  But surely, he would have known something like that would happen?  She would never find out if he had, so Rose decided to change the subject.

“So now you know.”  Outside the open library door, Rose saw a flash of tweed which River was sitting at the wrong angle to have noticed.  Deciding to play with the Doctor a bit, she said, “And there’s one question, River Song, that I’ve been just dying to ask since I knocked on your parents’ door.”

“Yes?”

She had to fight to keep a straight face, but she managed as she leaned forward and whispered, in her best Sarah Jane impersonation, “Tell me, does he still stroke bits of the TARDIS?”

When the Doctor walked into the room, it was filled with laughter.

+ + + + +

River had not slept very long when she was awakened by a light rapping at the door.  Not the Doctor, then, she thought to herself.  After all, he would not have knocked.  River decided to ignore the Intruder, and closed her eyes once again.

When Rose knocked a second time, River had had it.  She pushed herself to her feet from the sprawling position she had taken on her parents’ bed so as not to pin her gun between her leg and the mattress.  Making her way to the door, she flung it wide before drawing and aiming right between Rose Tyler’s eyes.  This time, the girl was smart enough to put up her hands, but that would not save her.  River was just not in the mood to be forgiving right now.

“What the hell do you want?” she demanded, wishing she had more time to get her voice under control before she spoke.

Surprisingly, Little Miss Tyler was cool as a cucumber with her reply: “I think you and I need to talk,” she said.

Wanting to roll her eyes, but unwilling to let them off of the intruder in order to do so, River settled for clenching her free hand into a fist instead.  She answered through gritted teeth, “I’ve nothing to say to you.”

The woman just would not go away.  Nor did she shut up.  “All right,” she went on.  “Would it help if I told you I’m not here to take the Doctor from you?”

River snorted.  Why would a woman who crossed dying dimensions just to see the man she loved again not return once again to do the exact same thing?

“Really, I’m not,” the Intruder insisted.  And then, Rose Tyler said something completely unexpected.

“After all, I’ve had a lifetime with him already, you know, and he’s regenerated anyway.  Not to mention, he’s your husband, and I’m in mourning for mine.”

River dropped her arm—it was starting to ache from the weight at the end of it anyway—and holstered her gun as Rose finished, “I’m really not in a fit state for any new romances just now.”

Stuck on the whole “lifetime” comment, River asked, “What are you talking about?  How is two years a lifetime?”

“I’ve had eighty years with my Doctor.  He just died three days ago, and I buried him this morning.  Hence, the graveyard.”

Glossing over the fact that, in order to have had eighty years of marriage with anyone—much less the Doctor—Rose Tyler would have to be somewhere around three times River’s own age, River insisted, “That’s impossible.”  She could not, would not, entertain the possibility that Rule One still applied to her.  “He’s never gone back to your universe before now.”

Curiouser and curiouser, this impossible, irritating blonde claimed that there was a part-human version of the Doctor.  “I think he might have left out a few details when he told you about all that happened with Davros,” she said.

On a sigh, River bowed to the inevitable.  “Rule One: The Doctor lies.”

“I thought Rule One was ‘Don’t run off,’” the girl—no, if what she said was the truth, then she was far from just a girl—answered.

“That’s the Doctor’s rule.  You and I both knew no one actually ever follows that rule anyway.”

“True.  And I guess your rule fits in this case, even if it is just a lie of omission.”

River wondered how it could be leaving something out of the facts when clearly, the Doctor had been back in direct contradiction to his assertions that he had not.  The next second, River thought she must have fallen into the Intruder’s trap, because she found herself telling Rose about House—whom she had heard about from all four participants in that particular adventure: the Doctor, her parents, and the TARDIS.  She also, quite oddly, found herself reassuring the other woman that her room still existed on the ship, and then they were walking to the library.

She had not earned the title of Professor without asking questions, so as soon as they were both in the corridor, River asked, “So, what do you mean, a part-human version of the Doctor?”

The answer seemed totally unconnected to the subject at hand, but things involving the Doctor usually did.

“He told you about his ‘fightin’ hand?’” Rose asked.  River remembered the story of the Sycorax invasion just as the Doctor was ill with regeneration sickness, and how the leader of the Sycorax had cut off the Doctor’s hand and it had fallen to the Earth.

Rose recounted the story of the hand’s return to the Doctor, and her aborted reunion with the Time Lord.  The story was changed from the version the Doctor had told, but not in its entirety.  As she listened, River realized that the changes served only one purpose: to hide Donna Noble’s involvement and the creation of a part-human duplicate of the Doctor’s previous form.  River could not help a gasp as the TARDIS whispered a word into her mind—somewhat apologetically, though as surprised as she was, River could not have blocked out the ship’s voice.  The word made her shiver, because she realized what must have happened to Donna Noble.

“You’re talking about a human-Time Lord metacrisis, but that’s not possible,” she interjected.  “The human wouldn’t be able to handle the mind of a Time Lord—Donna’s brain would have burned up and killed her.”

“She seemed fine when she and the Doctor left me and my Doctor at Bad Wolf Bay.”

“It wouldn’t have been immediate, but I think the Doctor may have found a way to stop her dying.  He mentioned giving Donna’s grandfather something to give her as a wedding gift later on, but it’s like she just up and left after that stuff with Davros.  He didn’t mention travelling with her again after that.”

River now wondered how many other events the Doctor had “doctored” in his stories.  She would not have minded him keeping certain things to himself—some things could be too painful to try to share even with one’s spouse, after all—but he just covered them over with slight retellings.  If he had said at the time that there was more, but he did not wish to go into it, River would have happily let him keep his secrets.  Finding out this way about his embroidery of the truth with the lies just hurt.

Rose caught her attention again when she said, “So now you know.”  The conspiratorial air that Rose took up just then intrigued River, and Rose continued, “And there’s one question, River Song, that I’ve been just dying to ask since I knocked on your parents’ door.”

“Yes?”

Rose waggled her eyebrows as she whispered, “Tell me, does he still stroke bits of the TARDIS?”

The question was so absurd, and so apt, that River could not help but laugh.

+ + + + +

Ten minutes after Rose left the room, the Doctor got bored, so he decided that he might as well get started taking the TARDIS back to the right universe again.  He couldn’t actually fly it the whole way through by himself, but he could at least do a pre-flight—River would be so pleased—and get her out of the graveyard.

The TARDIS would not budge.  After he found River’s analysis on the screen which told him when they could leave Pete’s World for good (in about five minutes) he had tried to at least dematerialize, but the TARDIS would have none of it.  He asked what was the matter, and got the distinct impression that the ship thought River was not talking to her.

Considering River’s ability to actually speak in the telepathic equivalent of words with his ship, and her usual elation at doing so, the Doctor found the TARDIS’s assumption rather worrying.  Since the TARDIS couldn’t tell him River’s side, he went in search of his wife, whom he had resolve never to tack on the “sort of” when he referred to her ever again, after taking Rose’s words for the sound advice they were.  He hoped that Rose had had enough time to reassure River; they were both brilliant, and he would find any situation in which both his past and his present love became friends extremely wonderful.

The TARDIS must have been rather upset and eager to get River talking to her again, because only a minute later, the Doctor heard voices coming from an open doorway.

“. . . There’s one question, River Song,” Rose said as he approached close enough for her voice to become distinct words.  He saw her in one of the wing-backed chairs the TARDIS had put in this newer version of the library.  Rose continued, “that I’ve been just dying to ask since I knocked on your parents’ door.”

He could not hear the question, but when he walked into the library Rose’s eyes were dancing with mirth, and both women were laughing.

He had the rather unnerving impression that they were laughing at him.

+ + + + +

Rose was still laughing; every time she caught her breath, her gaze would fall on the Doctor standing there in his bow tie and his tweed jacket, and she would be off again.  River, on the other hand, had managed to stop entirely, and Rose was glad to see the smile on her face as the woman brushed tears—this time of mirth—from her cheeks.

“Oh, I like you,” River said, voice smooth as molasses and eyes half-lidded.

Finally getting herself under control, Rose answered, “I’m glad, but I take no credit.”  She looked pointedly at the Doctor over River’s shoulder.  “Sarah Jane asked me that exact same thing when we first met, and he looked about the same when he walked in on us giggling like mad women back then as he does right now.”

The smile left River’s face abruptly, and she turned her head to look at the Doctor, who adjusted his bow tie and cleared his throat before talking.

“We can leave for home in about five minutes,” he said.

“That was fast.  Took a day back when Mickey was aboard that time,” Rose said.

“That’s because it was a crash landing, since I was the only one at the time who could help with the power-up.  I also couldn’t reach all of the necessary maneuvering controls at the exact right times all by myself, and explaining which ones were needed when to the two of you would have taken too long.”

He paused, then continued, “Speaking of help with driving, River, why is my TARDIS currently in a sulk?”

Rose pondered the implications of the Doctor’s statement, and how exactly that question was a direct segue from the lack of a co-pilot, she had no idea.  He must have meant River could help to power the TARDIS, but how?  The woman in question had turned away from the Doctor again when he started talking—he would have a lot of groveling to do—and at his question, River’s face scrunched up briefly as though she might start weeping again.

So it was more than just Rose’s sudden appearance that had upset the other woman.  Something to do with the TARDIS sulking?

When River got herself under control enough to speak, Rose was astonished at the deadness of her tone, which was such a contrast to just the moment before.

“I should have known you’d take her side, when she’s the one who shut me out first,” she said.

+ + + + +

As soon as she could stop laughing, River wiped her eyes—Rose’s question had been that funny—and smiled.  For some reason, Rose was having more trouble getting hold of herself, for all that she was three times River’s own age and supposedly more mature.  Finally, the other blonde stopped laughing and caught her breath, and River opened her mouth.

“Oh, I like you,” she said, surprising herself.  Because, she found, she really did like this impossibly young-looking older woman, with her sense of humor and her storytelling.  It was actually quite difficult not to like her, really.

“I’m glad,” Rose smiled before continuing, “but I take no credit.  Sarah Jane asked me that exact same thing when we first met, and he looked about the same when he walked in on us giggling like mad women back then as he does right now.”

It was then that River noticed that Rose was not actually looking at her, but at something—or rather, someone—over her shoulder.

She turned her head and saw her husband, looking for all the universe like he knew they had been laughing at him and that two of his female friends laughing did not bode well for the continued non-implosion of said universe.

“We can leave for home in about five minutes,” he said, shaking his head at them, and as he continued to speak she had to turn away, remembering his lies and the TARDIS’s betrayal.

She vaguely heard Rose mention how soon it was compared to another time they had come to this universe, but did not tune back in to the conversation until she heard the Doctor call her name.  She listened, but did not turn back around to look at her husband.

“Why is my TARDIS in a sulk?” he accused.

She saw Rose’s eyes widen while she answered on something that could only have been called a growl, “I should have known you’d take her side, when she’s the one who shut me out first.”

+ + + + +

Somehow, this situation seemed very familiar to the Doctor.  He was just having a bit of trouble making the right connections in his memory.  Oh, he would remember eventually, just not yet.

His wife’s smooth and sexy alto voice proclaimed her liking for Rose Tyler.  His hearts lightened; he had hoped that these two would be able to get along—once he had gotten over the fear that River would shoot Rose, that is—and River actually liking Rose was so much better than that.

“I’m glad,” Rose said, and the Doctor agreed.  Then she continued, and he remembered why this scene seemed so familiar.

“I take no credit.  Sarah Jane asked me that same question when we first met—”

Ah.  The Krillitane.  He’d walked into the computer lab of the school the Krillitane had been using to solve the Skasis Paradigm, and Rose and Sarah Jane had been—

“—giggling like mad women back then as he does right now.”

She did that on purpose, he realized.  The little minx.

River’s head turned, and her expression was not the happy, laughing one he had expected just the moment before.  He started to tell his two favorite humans in two universes that they could go home soon, as long as River helped, but his wife turned away again as soon as he started to speak.  He knew it would probably undo at least most of what Rose had managed with their talk, but without the TARDIS’s cooperation, they would not be going home in five days, much less five minutes.

So he said the only thing he could think of to get the discussion started once his answer to Rose’s question about timing came to a convenient segue:

“Speaking of help with driving, River, why is my TARDIS currently in a sulk?”

He cursed his bluntness when River responded and he heard the tears fighting her voice for dominance.  She also seemed to be angry with him as, despite the choked quality, there was a discernible growl in her tone—and not a playful one, either.

“I should have known you’d take her side,” she said, and he thought that was rather silly, because he could think of hundreds of times he had not taken his ship’s side in an argument.  River continued, “when she’s the one who shut me out first.”

+ + + + +

Why does she say that as though the TARDIS always lets her in? Rose wondered briefly.

“She does that to me all the time,” the Doctor answered his wife, and Rose could personally recall at least a handful of such occurrences when the ship had done the same to her as well, even after eight decades.  In fact, the last time that Rose could remember the Doctor being shut out of his ship’s communication loop, he had pouted so much that she had finally broken down and reminded him of his tendency to call the ship by the female pronoun.

Living entity that she was, the TARDIS was bound to pick up some feminine traits from constantly being called “she” and “her,” namely, the extreme desire not to deal with the males—or even, sometimes, the other females—in their lives every now and then.  It seemed he had taken that observation to heart in this regeneration, and from what Rose could tell, it no longer bothered him as much.

“She’s never—until now—refused to tell me anything,” River responded then.  “Not once in all the years since she taught me to fly her.”

Woah.  Her husband had never said anything about the TARDIS teaching its own pilots.  In fact, back when Rose herself had lived on board, she had gotten a few “lessons” from the Doctor.  The TARDIS had not even offered to teach her.

A rather strong impression of “you didn’t ask” touched her mind, and this was different from any time previous in which Rose had “heard” the ship communicating.  This time, she also received an image of a somewhat ragged-looking brunette woman saying the actual words.  The mystery of that could wait, however.  For now, Rose had another question.

“You can fly the TARDIS?” she asked, inching toward River in her chair.

“Better than he can,” came the answer, and Rose decided it was only fitting that the ship should teach someone to fly her better than the pilot who had learned from other pilots—and centuries of experience at doing it only mostly right.

“Oi!” the Doctor protested.

“Not now, Doctor,” Rose said, wondering if he had even thought of what his objection would do to the overall conversation before he had made it.

Apparently not, because he apologized right away, and his sheepish expression was even better on this face than it had been on the last two.  She continued her inquiry.

“You can hear her too?”  The part-human Doctor had once told her that, as far as he knew, no one but he could hear the TARDIS.  He had been utterly gob-smacked when she told him she had always been able to communicate with the telepathic ship, but had not been able to figure out how it was possible.  Mickey had not been able to, after all, and as far as either of them had known, neither had Jack.

River nodded, but before she could speak, the TARDIS said to the room in general, Silly Time Lord.  Of course she can.  He must have been wondering about the implications in Rose’s second question about hearing the TARDIS.  The ship continued, Why would you think the Bad Wolf deaf to me?  That would defeat the purpose of her creation.  We could not keep you safe if we could not communicate and coordinate our efforts.

Rose finally recalled what had happened that day on the Gamestation before her first Doctor—was this regeneration her third, or did her part-human husband make this eleventh Doctor her fourth?—had regenerated.  She had looked into the Heart of the TARDIS, and the ship had looked right back.  They had melded for a few minutes to save the Doctor—and Jack—and then the Doctor had taken the time vortex from her with a kiss so that she would not burn and die from the inside out.

Could that be when she had stopped aging?  There was no time to figure that out for certain, as the TARDIS told them all that they would not have a very large window of time in which to return before the walls between universes sealed again.

“We’d best get going then,” she said, standing so that she could make her way past the Doctor into the corridor.

As she passed him, he started to ask the question she had been expecting since the TARDIS had confirmed she could talk to her.

“How long have you—?”

Instead of answering directly, she chose to toss back a quote from the day she had first felt the TARDIS’s presence:

“—Did I mention, it also travels in time?”

She made her way to the control room, and Rose hoped that the Doctor would be able to repair whatever damage he had done to his relationship with River.  In fact, so as to help in that endeavor, she decided right then to ask to stay on Earth for a while.  Maybe she could visit Mickey—or Jack, if he had not found a way to re-repair his vortex manipulator yet.  Maybe Sarah Jane would like a visit too.

She might, Rose thought, even pay a visit to River’s parents, if she could get the Doctor to tell her their address.  It had to be a bit odd, being the Doctor’s in-laws, and she was curious to find out how they got along only travelling with him some of the time.

+ + + + +

If not for the heaviness in her heart translating to her feet, River would have stormed out of the library just then.  Instead, she sat with jaw clenched as the Doctor said, “She does that to me all the time,” as if his experience was the yard stick by which others were allowed to be upset with the universe.  She wanted to roll her eyes, but thought she might just scream instead.

In lieu of either option, she informed her idiot husband that “She’s never—until now—refused to tell me anything.  Not once in all the years since she taught me to fly her.”

“You can fly the TARDIS?” Rose’s voice broke through River’s tension, but only slightly.

“Better than he can,” she replied, pointing a thumb behind her and taking a bit of petty pleasure from saying so in front of him.

“Oi!”

“Not now, Doctor,” Rose scolded, and River was surprised when he actually apologized.  He only did that when he knew he could not get away with pretending he had been right all along.  Or when he actually thought he should, which was about as rare as the former circumstance.

Rose was full of surprises today, because she asked, “You can hear her too?” as though she had not expected anyone but the Doctor—or perhaps the Doctor and herself?—to be able to talk to the old ship.  Could Rose hear the TARDIS?

The Doctor must have been wondering the same thing, because the entity in question said to the room at large, Silly Time Lord.  Of course she can.  Why would you think the Bad Wolf deaf to me?  That would defeat the purpose of her creation.  We could not keep you safe if we could not communicate and coordinate our efforts.

Wondering why the TARDIS called Rose the Bad Wolf, but still too upset to bother asking, River sighed.  She figured she should let the TARDIS apologize; there had better be a good explanation though.

I am sorry, my child, came to her immediately.  There was not time to explain about the crossing, and I needed all of my mind to keep myself together in the void without collapsing both universes around us.  As it is, we have only a very short window in which to return once I am fully recharged.  The last sentence was said to all three of the library’s occupants, and Rose stood, walking around River’s chair to the door.

“We’d better get going then,” Rose said.

River heard her husband ask the other woman part of a question, and Rose’s tone was somewhat facetious when she answered, “Did I mention it also travels in time?”

Finally feeling able and willing to forgive the TARDIS, River rose from the leather seat and turned to the door, not looking at the Doctor as she did so.

She did notice that he seemed rooted to the spot though, and she wanted to go home, so she called his name to get his attention as Rose made her way down the corridor.  She paused to make sure he followed her out.

“River, I—”

“—Not now, Doctor.”  She still could not talk to him, and left the room before he could say anything more.

+ + + + +

Oh, bother.  The Doctor realized he should have asked River what was bothering her when he had first noticed something was wrong.  Or at least before trying to sort out where they were.  He could not figure out why the TARDIS not talking to her for a minute would bother his wife though.  After all, “She does that to me all the time.”

“She’s never—until now—refused to tell me anything,” River responded.  “Not once in all the years since she taught me to fly her.”

“You can fly the TARDIS?” Rose interrupted, and the Doctor watched her sit forward in her chair.

“Better than he can,” his wife answered.  He could not help the instinctive reaction of Time Lord-y pride that came out of his mouth in response to that statement.

“Oi!” he said, mentally kicking himself even before Rose scolded him with a “Not now, Doctor.”

“Sorry.”

Rose looked to River.  “You can hear her too?”  That just boggled the Doctor’s mind, because the way she asked the question implied that Rose herself was not as deaf to the TARDIS as he had always thought all humans but River were.

River nodded, but said no more.

Silly Time Lord, the TARDIS’s thought impressions clearly translated to.  For some reason, these days, he always translated the thoughts into actual sentences, and when he did, they always sounded like they were being spoken by the woman whose body the ship had inhabited ever-so-briefly during the House incident.  He wondered if the other two heard actual words, or were able to translate the telepathic impulses like he was.

If they were, he wondered what voice they heard them in, and that question was redoubled when he realized that the ship was talking to all three of them as she said, Of course she can.  Why would you think the Bad Wolf deaf to me?  That would defeat the purpose of her creation.  We could not keep you safe if we could not communicate and coordinate our efforts.

As Rose gasped and seemed to lose herself in thought, the TARDIS continued speaking, this time only to River and himself.

I am sorry, my child; there was not time to explain about the crossing, and I needed all of my mind to keep myself together in the void without collapsing both universes around us.  As it is, we have only a very short window in which to return once I am fully recharged.  That last sentence, the Doctor noted since Rose started to stand, was once again directed to all three of them.

“We’d best get going then,” Rose said.

As she passed him on her way out the door, the Doctor asked, “How long have you—”

“—Did I mention, it also travels in time?” she quoted him in answer.

He was the last to leave the room, not comprehending how Rose could have kept that ability a secret the whole time she had been travelling with him.

“Doctor,” River said as she too left the room, shaking him from his stunned silence.

“River, I—” he started.

“Not now, Doctor,” his wife threw over her shoulder.

That was the second time in a row she had called him “Doctor” instead of “Sweetie” or “My Love,” and his hearts ached at the tone of voice in which she said his name.  He had not realized until that moment how much he missed her pet names.

More importantly, there was something even more than Rose’s appearance and the TARDIS’s sudden silence bothering River, and he had a sinking suspicion that it was somehow his fault.  He could not rely on Rose to keep helping him with this particular mess, though; that would not be fair to any of them, and would probably do more harm to his marriage than helping it.

Just as soon as they were back in the right universe, he resolved, he would drop Rose off anywhere she wanted to go, and then he would have a proper talk with his wife.

She would probably make him grovel, but he had done plenty of that before.

That was to the Other one, the TARDIS reminded him, using her name for Amy.  Not once have you ever groveled or begged her daughter for anything.

Oh, bother.  He realized his ship was right as he finally made his way to the console room.  This was going to be more difficult than he thought.

+ + + + +

River strode into the console room, giving Rose a tight smile.  She noted that the other woman had braced herself against the railing in anticipation of the crossing back to their home universe.  Rose sent a question with her eyes, and River answered with a shake of her head, indicating that she did not want to talk about the issue right then.

Just as she started flipping switches and pushing buttons to begin the dematerialization sequence, she heard the Doctor’s footsteps in the corridor.

Seconds later, he laid a hand on her shoulder, which she shrugged off.

A sigh ruffled the curls behind her left ear, and her husband plodded to the other side of the control column.

They piloted the ship in silence, despite being thrown about willy-nilly every few seconds.  River noticed that, although the frequency of the individual shakes and shudders was the same as before, somehow they were not thrown quite so violently as they were on the way to the strange universe.

When they landed, it was in Cardiff, according to the monitor, and it was the same year—on the same day, even—that she and the Doctor had left her parents.

River’s reconnaissance was interrupted when Rose asked, “What happened to the sound?”

“What do you mean?”

“The sound the TARDIS makes.  The whole time we were being tossed like a salad just now, it was completely silent.”

River had not noticed, but now that she looked back on the last few minutes, she realized that Ms. Tyler was absolutely correct.  She looked at her husband’s face for the first time since he had first walked into the library, and he gave her a self-deprecating shrug, lifting one corner of his mouth in a small smile.

“I love you,” he mouthed silently, and a bit of her anger at his lies subsided.  He still had a lot of groveling to do, but those three words from his lips let her know that everything would eventually work out between them.

“That’s just the sound of the parking break, Dear,” she said, keeping her eyes on the man across from her.  “The Doctor usually leaves it engaged because he likes the noise, that’s all.”  Finished with her explanation, she finally looked away to share a “what can you do?” expression with the other woman.

Rose laughed.  “I’ve always been a bit partial to it myself, come to think of it.  That is definitely typical of you, though, Doctor.  You’re still the same, even if you do have a new face.”

There were grins all around now, and then someone knocked on the door.

+ + + + +

Remembering even after more than eighty years how bumpy travelling in the TARDIS had been, and expecting the crossing to be worse, Rose decided just to hang onto the railing for the duration.  It would not do to break a bone or something because—as long as it had been since her last trip—she was no longer accustomed to keeping her balance as the ship bucked around her.

A few seconds later, River entered the control room and immediately set to toggling switches and things.

Rose’s heart wrenched at the Doctor’s sorrowful face as he entered, put a hand on his wife’s shoulder, and was rebuffed.  He seemed to get an idea then, and looked at River before pulling a lever situated on the border between her half of the console and his.

After that, it seemed to Rose that the Doctor flew the TARDIS—or his half of it, anyway—just the same as he always had, if with a bit less of his usual verve and mania due to his strained relations with River.

Suddenly, she felt a bit drained, and gripping the railing took more energy than before.  Despite the unexpected enervation, Rose could not help noticing that something was missing.  She could not quite figure out what the missing element was until the rocking and the jerking stopped, and the time rotor stilled.

Had they landed?  She could not hear—

Of course!  The thing that was missing, it was the sound, the noise the TARDIS made in flight.  She had not heard the noise since the Doctor and River had landed it twenty yards from the grave of her dearly departed husband.  Could the sound be turned off then?

“What happened to the sound?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” was River’s reply.

“The sound the TARDIS makes.  The whole time we were being tossed like a salad just now, it was completely silent.”

River’s eyes widened and she looked at the Doctor, whose back was to Rose for the moment.  She saw him shrug, and a second or two after that, the other woman’s whole demeanor softened slightly.

In observing the couple, Rose had nearly forgotten that she had asked a question, but River apparently had not, and she answered, “That’s just the sound of the parking break, Dear.  The Doctor usually leaves it engaged because he likes the noise, that’s all.”

River turned to look at her then, and the look she gave told Rose more than anything else in that brief exchange that the pair in front of her would be all right.  She was glad of that, because the Doctor deserved to be happy, and she had come to like River in the short few hours she had known her.

She threw out her Generic “Same Old Doctor” Comment #23, and laughed with River.

Just as the Doctor joined in, there was a knock at the door.

+ + + + +

River was avoiding him.  He had only just walked into the room, but he could tell that she would not turn around to look at him, even if he called her name.  He did not know what he had done—beyond the things Rose had already set him straight on—but he could not stand seeing River in so much pain.

Hoping it would help, he laid a hand apologetically on one of her shoulders, trying to channel his love through that one small contact.  She would probably slap him if he tried to kiss her right now, after all.  And besides, that would be a bit awkward with Rose in the room.

She shrugged, dislodging his hand, and he sighed.

As he walked to the opposite side of the console, he spotted a particular lever.  Double-checking that River still was not paying attention to him, he surreptitiously switched it into the “off” position just as the ship dematerialized.

He spent the next few minutes just trying to stay at the controls as the TARDIS was buffeted to and fro.  When they made it to the proper universe, he set course for the exact date he and River had left her parents: September 20, 2012.  Before they saw Amy and Rory though, the TARDIS needed a bit of a pit stop.  So, instead of Leadworth, he pointed them to Cardiff, noticing as he did that his wonderful ship was not as drained as she had been when they landed on Pete’s World.

After the landing, he set the controls for standby and then waited.

What he was waiting for, however, was not Rose’s question about the lack of noise.  He had no doubt that the expected event would happen though.

River, whom he had not stopped watching, even during the turbulence in the crossing, looked right at him after Rose finished her question.

He shrugged, giving his wife an apologetic smile.  When he told her silently how he felt for her, her gaze softened just a bit more, and her eyes did not leave his until after she told Rose, “That’s just the sound of the parking break, Dear.  The Doctor usually leaves it engaged because he likes the noise, that’s all.”

Even though she had turned to look at Rose now, his hearts felt a bit less of their burden from the moment before.  River was looking at him voluntarily again.  It had only been for a moment, but she had acknowledged him and his efforts to apologize.  The rest was a matter of talking, which of course he could do.  He had been doing it rather brilliantly for over a millennium, actually.

He would not let that thought migrate to the inevitable “but not talking” that it wanted to go to, or he would lose the courage that he had been saving up to have just such a discussion with his wife.

Speaking of River, she was laughing now.  He did not know why, but he was happy to see the humor on her lovely face again, and to have Rose back in the right universe again.  He was also glad that his brilliant friend and his brilliant wife had become friends, so he joined in their laughter with his own chuckles.

He had momentarily forgotten that he was waiting for something, but remembered quickly when a knock sounded on the TARDIS door.

Ah, he thought.  That would be Jack now.

+ + + + +

Jack Harkness had forgotten many things over his millennia of existence, but even three centuries after the fact, he could still remember the day that Rose Tyler returned to her rightful universe.

It was not the excitement or the discovery that the Doctor had regenerated again that made the memory stick in his mind.  Rather, it was the fact that, on that day, he began to hope again for better things.

And better things had certainly come.  He had helped Rose to reestablish herself in her home universe (and to hide her true age once it came into question) and in turn, she had helped him (and Gwen and Rex) rebuild Torchwood from below-ground on up.

It had been a good few centuries—not counting the times he had been pulled backward and had to relive his way back to what he called the present.  Gwen and Rhys’s descendants still came to visit him to this day, and though Rose eventually did begin to age, the process was so slow, he could usually ignore the signs.

Today, however, was not a usual day.

She had always been fit, Rose had.  She used to joke that she had to keep her running muscles in shape for that time when she would go back to travelling with the Doctor.  She always said it would be the next time he stopped by for a visit, which was about once or twice a decade, but every time he offered, all Rose said was, “It’s not time yet.”

Jack had asked her why not once, and the answer she gave him had been just as cryptic.  It was something to do with female intuition, he thought.  Either that was the case, or she was just afraid to go back to that life after so long sticking to one place.

Or maybe, she was still mourning her husband—even after all this time, she had never remarried—and did not want to confuse either herself or the Doctor with her presence on the TARDIS.  That was also a possibility.

Anyway, Rose had always been fit, so when she collapsed just walking across the floor of the hub one morning, complaining of chest pains, Jack was understandably worried.

“Rosie?” he called to her, pulling her into his lap as he sat on his knees on the floor, trying to keep her talking.  “Rose, come on, stay with me.  You can’t die now.  You haven’t even caught up to the Doc yet.  Who’s going to keep me company if you go?”

“Sorry.  Can’t help it.”  Her voice was so weak.

He swallowed the sob coming up his throat and looked around the rebuilt and twenty-fourth century, state-of-the-art Hub, trying to deny the evidence of his fingers at Rose’s carotid.  Her heart was not beating, and it was only a matter of time before she stopped breathing.

Torchwood had long ago replaced the massive portable defibrillators that were staples in an emergency, in favor of the more technologically-advanced Personal Emergency Devices which strapped onto a person’s torso, just below the pectoral muscle.  Sensors in the Device would detect arrhythmia, and send just the right amount of electric shock to prevent cardiac arrest.  Everyone over the age of forty-five in Torchwood’s employ was issued one—except him, that is—so this should not have been happening to Rose.

On a terrible hunch, Jack reached with one hand to Rose’s side, where one of the PED sensors was supposed to lay when the Device was strapped on properly.  There was nothing there.  He looked down again at his beloved friend’s face, now seeing the lines, the white roots of her thinning hair, and the fatigue in her eyes that matched his own, if only with less intensity of age.

She must have felt his question before he knew he wanted to ask it, because she said, “It’s been going off more and more the last few months.  I got tired of all of the random little shocks.  I’m old, Jack, and I’ve had a fantastic life.”  Her words came slower and slower as the oxygen left her body and was not replaced.  “Let me go.”

A tear fell on Rose’s paper-thin cheek, and Jack nodded, kissing her forehead.  “Bye, Rosie.”

He set her gently on the floor, then stood, turning to go find Gwen’s however-many-greats-great-grandson, who was the medic in this generation’s Torchwood team.

Her voice calling his name—was it slightly stronger than just seconds before?—stopped him in his tracks.

When he turned around again, she was staring at her hands, which she had somehow managed to lift, and then she started to push herself up off the floor.  She managed to stand, and he could not help but stare at the woman who should not have been able to move because her body was shutting down.

“Jack,” she said again, and it was then he noticed the motes of golden dust-like particles swirling around her fingertips.

“Yeah, Rosie?”  He could not muster a more intelligent response than that; he knew what those particles meant, and had not expected to see them anywhere near Rose Tyler.

            He was, however, already reaching for both the phone and the spare bit of psychic paper he had managed to find the last time he was on the TARDIS when she said, “Call the Doctor,” just before she threw her head and arms back and they sprouted tongues of golden flame.

+ + + + +

Author’s Note: Yes, I’ve left it like that deliberately, because all of the ideas I had for this story would not fit in a single fic.  I’m hoping to write a sequel, but I promised myself before I started writing this one that, once it was finished, I would go back to writing the original story I’ve been working on for over a year now (it’s looking to become my first novel!).  After that story is finished, I want to write a sequel (or sequels—it was looking like it was going to need more than one), which is why this story is “Part One,” and you don’t see a “Part Two” advertised on my list of fics yet.  If there ever is a “Part Two” in the works, I will change my profile to let everyone know.

As you can see, this story is definitely 11^th Doctor/River Song, with implied 10^th Doctor Duplicate/Rose Tyler.  There’s also 10^th Doctor/Rose Tyler and future 11^th Doctor/Rose Tyler implied, as well as 11^th Doctor/Rose Tyler friendship.

So am I a Doctor/Rose or a Doctor/River ‘shipper?  Both.  I like 11^th Doctor/River—they’re just so cute—but I don’t think River is ever going to actually meet the 12^th Doctor, since as of “The Angels Take Manhattan” she is Professor River Song again.  Not to mention, as soon as she met the 10^th Doctor, she died.  So, despite River being a human Time Lord, the Doctor/River ‘ship cannot work long-term, as much as I like it.

Which brings me to the Rose portion.  I’ve always liked the Doctor/Rose ‘ship, whether it was the 9^th or the 10^th Doctor (or the Duplicate).  But the only way I saw Rose ever coming back to her original universe was if the 10^th Doctor Duplicate was dead.  I just didn’t know why Rose wouldn’t be dead as well, and then I remembered the Bad Wolf.  Which is where the idea for this story’s concept came from.  I figured, if River, having been conceived in the Time Vortex and exposed to it over many years, could become a human Time Lord, then why couldn’t Rose as well—she wasn’t just exposed to the Vortex, she absorbed it, after all.

I know the writers have said before that the Doctor took it all out of her, but my theory was that he took enough of it out of her so that she could live, but over the time period after that, both during and after her final year on the TARDIS, perhaps her body had begun to adapt—to be able to handle at least some of the energy that she had held in her so briefly.  After all, what doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger.  All Rose would have needed was time to become stronger.

Also, I have no idea of the real reason why the Doctor can't travel to other universes without other Time Lords, but I figured the theory I put forth was just as good as any other on