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On River's twenty-first birthday, the Doctor gave her a book. He called it the Book of Faces - his faces. Every face he'd ever worn until the eleventh.
He waited until after he'd given her all her other presents, both tangible and - ahem - experiential, and they were lying sprawled across their wide, thoroughly disheveled bed in the TARDIS. He presented it to her with an air of resignation, instantly explained when River got her first look inside. Teasing him about his former selves would provide her with years of entertainment, as it clearly already had.
"You may meet others," he told her. "But you need to know my earlier selves, so you can avoid them."
"That doesn't sound like much fun," she said, giving him a slight pout.
"Yes, well, sometimes averting universe-collapsing paradoxes isn't fun, but I think we should do our best anyway."
"Hmm," she said, carefully agreeing to nothing. She flipped slowly through the album. There were two pictures to each page, full color. "I see your fashion sense hasn't changed much," she remarked. "Bow-tie, bow-tie, ridiculous hair . . . celery?"
"Long story."
"I certainly hope so. Oh, now that's better," she said, pausing over a man who looked like he'd walked straight out of Victorian England. Velvet frock coat, delicious long curls. He was, in a word, beautiful. The man who shared the page with Frock Coat wasn't bad either, though he was handsome in an entirely different way; he had almost no hair at all, and his face, while certainly striking, was all hard angles and planes and, well, nose. "Are you sure I'll never get to meet either of these you's?"
"That was a horrific mangling of the English language."
"That's hardly my fault, Doctor. You're the one who refused to teach me the Gallifreyan protocols for referring to past and future selves."
"Only because they're annoying."
"The protocols or your other selves?"
"Both," the Doctor replied firmly. "And no, you won't meet -"
He stopped suddenly, his eyes going unfocused. River frowned at him, but he was staring at something over her shoulder. She turned and looked but there was nothing there. "Doctor?" she asked, turning back to him.
"- either of them," he finished, as though he'd never paused. "Anyway, you wouldn't want to. They weren't nearly as much fun as me. Neither of them had a bowtie."
"Hmm," she said, watching him carefully. "That's a shame. You're sure?"
He smiled. "River Song, you are not the sort of woman I am likely - was likely - would have been likely to forget."
He kissed her then, long and deep. It was clearly a distraction, but one she was willing to let him get away with. And yet, even as they kissed, still one particular thought echoed in the back of her mind. One stray thought that she was careful to conceal when his mind and body breached her own.
Unless I made you.
***
It had been a long and dusty day at the dig, without much to show for it. River was exhausted and sore and not a little frustrated as she hitched a ride back to camp on the ground transporter. She had a very long list of things to do that night, starting with cataloguing all the small items of barely any significance that had been found that week, but all she could think about was a cool shower, a nap, and a hot meal, in that order.
She was glad that their campsite was, at least, reasonably comfortable. There was no electricity, but there was running water and adequate cooking facilities. As the director, she had her own hut with a private outdoor shower on the edge of camp, as far away from the intern housing as she could get. She asked the driver to drop her off at her hut to save having to backtrack, and barely waited until the transport was out of sight before starting to strip out of her dusty, sweat-stained clothing.
The shower helped immensely. She was still tired and sore and frustrated, but at least she was clean and cool. She went inside and lay down on her bed without bothering to dress and set her alarm to wake her in thirty minutes.
She was nearly asleep when she heard it. She thought at first it was a dream, but then she opened her eyes and caught a flash of bright, unmistakeable blue through the window. She sat up and reached for her discarded towel, wrapping it around herself and tucking the corner in so it would stay up. She wouldn't have bothered, but certain of the Doctor's incarnations could be remarkably prudish, and there was always the offhand chance that he'd have her parents along. Poor Rory's nerves could only take so much, she thought with a fond smile, as she slipped on a pair of sandals to protect her feet from the rocky soil.
The smile didn't last long once she stepped outside and got a proper look at the TARDIS. The TARDIS was the bluest blue River had ever seen, but the color seemed faded just now, almost sickly. There were singes and cracks along her hull, and the door, when River came round the corner, was missing the St. John's Ambulance logo that had been there for as long as she could remember.
"Hey there, old girl," she murmured, reaching out to touch the ship. "What happened to you?" The only answer she received was a psychic shudder, almost a moan. River bit her lip, suddenly deeply concerned about what she might find inside. If whatever had happened was bad enough to leave the TARDIS in such a state, she didn't like to think about what it might have done to the Doctor. If she were lucky, it might only be a particularly rough regeneration. But she didn't think it would be anything so simple.
She pulled the chain with her key over her head and drew a deep breath. She laid her palm flat against the side of the TARDIS and told the ship, "Whatever it was, I'm glad you brought him here." Then she slid the key into the lock and opened the door.
He was screaming.
She staggered back against the door, breath coming short and fast. It took her nearly a minute to regain enough control to realize the sound was in her head and not her ears. She threw up barriers, just as he himself had taught her, and that brought the noise down to a manageable level - still awful but no longer overwhelming. She swallowed and took in the wrecked console room before her; beneath the still-settling dust and debris, it wasn't one of the models she recognized. It looked as though a Gothic cathedral had been ruthlessly ransacked.
"Doctor?" she called shakily. She had to pick her way across the console room floor, pausing once to smother a still-flickering fire. "Doctor, it's me. If you can hear me -" She stopped. It wasn't likely he could hear her, and somehow she didn't think he'd be very far from the console room at a time like this.
She was right. She found him lying unconscious on the other side of the console, a tall, lanky figure in an incongruous velvet frock coat.
Frock coat.
Oh.
Oh hell. This wasn't a much later Doctor, as she'd first thought, but an earlier one from before she had ever met him. Her Doctor had been very clear that she was to avoid this sort of situation at all costs. The temporally responsible thing to do would be to walk out the door and tell the TARDIS she was sorry, so sorry, but she'd brought him too early and River couldn't help him.
That option received the split-second consideration it deserved before River discarded it. That may have been the responsible thing to do, but she would have never forgiven herself. She'd spent her lifetime rescuing the Doctor and being rescued in return, and she wasn't about to break the habit now.
She knelt on the floor, wishing suddenly that she were wearing rather more than a towel, and rested her fingers against his temples. She took a moment to steel herself and then dropped her barriers. Terrified, incoherent screaming flooded her mind and it was all she could do not to jerk back as though she'd touched her hand to a hot stove. She forced herself to stay still and project calm. Shhh. Hush now. You're safe.
He fought her. She hadn't expected that. Her Doctor had never fought her; his mind recognized hers and welcomed her in, no matter what. This Doctor lashed out like an injured, frightened animal. But he was too weak from the trauma of regeneration and whatever had come before to be much of a match. She kept herself a steady, calming presence, until at last he stopped trying to throw her out and subsided into exhausted resignation.
There now, she said, then. No need for any of that. You're safe with me.
Who are you? he replied, with an undercurrent of snarl.
Someone you will trust deeply one day. Rest, Doctor. Let me take over for a bit.
You - you're -
Don't try to wrap your head around it. Rest, she said again, and this time soothed him as only she knew how. He protested a little, but sleep was already dragging at him. She barely needed to do anything to push him into it.
When his mind finally went quiet, she withdrew, allowing her hands to drop from his temple to rest on her thighs. She was already exhausted, and this had barely begun.
"Right, then," she said aloud. "First things first: put some clothes on."
***
Being the director of a major archeological dig was not all sunshine and roses. There were personnel issues, paperwork, and budget cuts. Every ten days, she had to call the institute sponsoring their work and play, And what have you done for us lately, Dr. Song? There was the time-honored search for knowledge and then there were bureaucratic considerations, and her job was to try to reconcile the two with each other. This was thankless, exhausting, and - worse of all - boring.
One of the perks, however, was that she could sign a hoverpad out, and no one would ever ask her what she needed it for.
This was how she eventually got the unconscious Doctor out of the TARDIS and into her hut. From there, it was simply a matter of rolling him onto her bed and wrestling him out of his former self's ill-fitting clothing. He was covered in sweat and dirt, and so she wiped him down with a damp cloth, keeping her touch as clinical as possible - firm and gentle, but also impersonal. Then she covered him with a blanket, leaving his arms and hands free. It wouldn't do for him to wake up feeling trapped. She rather thought that this Doctor, in particular, would react badly to that.
She didn't need to check the Book of Faces to know which Doctor this was. Short hair, sharp features, long, lanky body - this was number nine, whom her Doctor had told her she would never meet. This was the Doctor fresh from the Time War, only minutes, perhaps, from having destroyed his people and the Daleks. For this Doctor to meet her now would be a disaster.
He would have to forget. She could do that, could turn the memory of today or however long he was here into a merciful blur. He would be left with faint memories of being cared for, of someone being kind to him, without ever remembering who it was. But she would know. There was some small satisfaction in that, she admitted to herself, in knowing that even if he wouldn't remember that it was she who had cared for him in his darkest hour, then at least she would.
River didn't waste much time on such reflections, not when there were far more practical matters to consider. She still hadn't eaten, and he would need to eat and drink when he woke, but she was very reluctant to leave him. River suspected that the TARDIS was in the middle of a major housekeeping and probably wouldn't let him inside, but that didn't mean he might not decide to wander off. Not having any clothes might stymy him - for a whole three minutes. She would need to leave him a note, but what could she write that would convince him to stay?
She bit her lip and finally wrote:
Doctor,
I've gone to get some food for us. I'll be back soon. Please don't go anywhere - you're not well.
River
Beneath that, she scribbled the Old High Gallifreyan hieroglyph for "Trust me."
It took her longer than she expected to return the hoverpad and find a minion onto whom she could foist the evening's cataloguing tasks. By then, dinner was in full swing in the mess, and she had to wait in line for two takeaway servings of stew, a loaf of bread, and two fresh water bottles. Nearly an hour had passed by the time she was able to return to her hut, and she half expected to find the bed empty and the Doctor gone.
He was still there, still unconscious. She eased herself down on the edge of the bed and spent a minute or two simply watching him. This was the hell of it, she thought - would be the hell of it, soon enough. Even when he didn't know her at all, he would still be utterly precious to her. She ghosted a hand over his short-cropped hair -
- and suddenly found her wrist caught in an iron-clad grip. The Doctor's eyes were open, staring. She winced, feeling bones grind together in a way they were never meant to. "Doctor," she managed, eyes tearing, "you're hurting me."
"Tell me why I should care," he growled. His eyes were steely blue and completely cold. "Tell me why you're someone I should give a damn about."
"Because you give a damn about everyone," she said, gritting her teeth against the pain. "You don't hurt anyone just because you can. Not even the Time War could change that."
He let go of her with the same shocking suddenness with which he'd grabbed her. The absence of pain made her gasp. She cradled her wrist to her chest. Nothing was broken - he'd been careful, despite his harsh words - but it would ache for days. "Thank you," she said, when she'd caught her breath.
"Who are you?" he demanded.
"Like I said -"
"I know what you said," he snapped. "Your name is River, you're someone I'll trust someday, you know Old High Gallifreyan. You were in my head and you felt like a Time Lord. But that's impossible, because I just murdered them all." He sprang into a crouch on the bed in one fluid motion, looming over her. "How were you outside the Time Lock? Are you working for Rassilon? There's nothing you can do - they're gone, they're all - gone -"
His voice stuttered, and she caught him as he swayed and fell. "Who are you?" he demanded again, far more weakly, even as she tucked him back under the blanket.
"I'm a friend."
"You're more than that. I felt it."
She smiled sadly. "Perhaps I will be. For now, I'm a friend. And you can't scare me, so I wish you'd stop wasting energy on trying." He was exhausted, she knew from experience, and probably felt very ill. Regenerating was certainly better than dying, but it didn't always feel that way.
He shook his head, staring up at her with more bewilderment than hostility, now. "You're impossible."
"A bit. But you like me that way."
"You did something to my head. Took the pain away."
She nodded. "Basic psychic first aid, that's all."
He closed his eyes. "You shouldn't have. Pain is the least of what I deserve after what I did."
"Oh sweetie," she said, the old, familiar endearment escaping before she could help it. "Someday, I'll say something very similar to you. And do you know what you'll say to me?" He didn't answer, nor did he look at her. She closed her eyes, remembered sitting with her Doctor deep in the TARDIS. She'd been shaking for hours, ever since she'd pulled the trigger, and he'd held her, held her, and told her he forgave her. I don't deserve your forgiveness, she'd said wretchedly, and he'd replied . . . "'It would be a terrible world, my love,'" she quoted aloud, "'if we only ever got what we deserved.'"
"That doesn't sound like me."
She smiled. "Not this you. But trust me. You'll get there."
He didn't answer. She dared to lay a hand on his. His fingers twitched, but he didn't pull away. "Do you think you can eat something? I have some stew and bread. And water - you should have fluids."
He sighed, looking away. "Reckon so."
She moved to help him sit up, but he warned her off with a glare. She turned away while he struggled through it on his own and removed the bowls of stew from their insulation, then broke the loaf of crusty bread in half. By the time she turned back, he was sitting up, watching her with that unnervingly sharp gaze. She gave him the stew and bread, set a frosty, damp water bottle on the nightstand for him, and pulled a chair up closer to the bed before retrieving her own meal. "Eat," she said, when he went on staring at her.
To her relief, he ate without argument. She herself was starving. The stew was plain but also hearty and nutritious, and her bowl was half-empty by the time she forced herself to slow down. She swallowed a bite of stew-soaked bread, washed it down with a sip from her own water bottle, and said, "You must be wondering where you are. Welcome to Herald's Roost in the late 51st century."
The Doctor frowned, looking, for the first time, vaguely interested. "The native population of Herald's Roost died out sometime in the last two centuries of the 3rd millennium. By the 51st century, there's nothing there but dust and bits of antique tech and - oh bloody hell, you're an archeologist, aren't you?"
He made it sound as though she skewered babies for a living, but she'd long since stopped letting him wind her up over her chosen profession. "Yes, I am," she told him cheerfully. "We're trying to figure out why the population died out - no one's ever solved that mystery. You wouldn't happen to know, would you?"
"No," he said shortly.
"Ah well, I figured it was worth asking. Would've made my job a lot easier. I'd still have to find the evidence, of course, but at least I'd know what to look for."
"Can't help you, wasn't there." He fell silent, chewing a piece of bread. "Really shouldn't be here, either, you know," he added, once he'd swallowed.
River nodded. "I know."
"I'll have to forget."
"I know. Don't worry, I'll take care of it."
His gaze sharpened. "So in the future, I just let you go rummaging through my brain whenever you like."
She smiled. "That might be overstating it. We both have our secrets." Which was certainly understating it, but River had already said more than she should - more than she would have if she hadn't intended to wipe this entire conversation from his mind. "But I have spent quite a bit of time 'rummaging through your brain,' as you say."
"Hmm," he said, a bit darkly. "Not sure I like the sound of that."
She winked. "You will. In any case," she went on, before he could react, "I think you should stay here tonight, at least. The TARDIS is doing a bit of clean-up, and I doubt she'd let you back in."
"Probably not," he agreed with a sigh. He glanced around, apparently taking in her small hut for the first time, with its distinct lack of any second bed. He looked at her, a slight edge of panic in his eyes. "Ah -"
"Don't worry, Doctor," she said with a smile and a reassuring pat on the shoulder, "I have a bedroll."
***
River's psychic first aid had put a stop to the screaming. It did not put a stop to the nightmares. She hadn't expected it would, since her own Doctor, two regenerations later, still had the occasional Time War-related nightmare. This was exponentially worse. The first two times he woke gasping, with screams half-choking him, River was able to soothe him, with touch and telepathy, and eventually send him to sleep again.
The third time, nothing she did seemed to help. His eyes were wide open and staring, but whatever he was seeing, River didn't think it was her. He wouldn't stop shaking.
It didn't take her very long to decide. The Doctor was the Doctor, even this sharp, prickly version of him. She climbed onto the bed and wrapped herself around him, held him until he stopped shaking and lay limp and exhausted, with tears still soaking into her pillow.
"River," he whispered, his voice a mere rasp.
"Shhh, my love. It's going to be all right. I promise, in the end, it will be all right."
He shook his head. "I can't - how can it be? How can it be that after everything . . . I didn't want to survive. I never thought I would." I wish I hadn't. It went unspoken, but River, touching him and still tuned into him telepathically, heard it loud and clear.
"Well, I don't," she said aloud, fiercely. She reached down and grasped his hand, linking their fingers together. "You and me, Doctor. You and me, time and space. We have so much running to do. And there's no one else in this universe I'd want to do it with." She did not say that without him, without the Doctor in the TARDIS, she'd never have existed at all. She'd long since resigned herself to the strangeness of her life, to being a walking paradox to whom nothing ever happened as it should. Living life any other way, she often thought, would be ever so dull.
He turned his head to look at her. "How long?"
"A while," she admitted. "But there'll be others in the meantime. I promise you, Doctor. There are things worth living for."
He didn't reply. He lay there, blue eyes watching hers steadily. He didn't want to sleep, she thought, for fear of the nightmares that lay in wait. But he was exhausted from regenerating, and his body was insistent. After no more than a few minutes, his eyes drifted shut. River kept vigil for over an hour, but his mind stayed quiet and calm, and eventually she slept again as well.
She woke alone when her alarm went off, rolled over, and was relieved to catch a glimpse of the TARDIS through the window. She got up, splashed water on her face, and changed into clean trousers and a clean shirt before slipping on her sandals and heading outside.
The TARDIS seemed to be feeling better. She got a spark of recognition when she laid her hand flat against the door. She let herself inside and found herself in a world of warm coral. She smiled and reached out to touch one of the struts. "Hello there, sexy," she murmured to the TARDIS. It was very different from her own Doctor's TARDIS, bursting to the seams with mismatched, insane gadgetry; this TARDIS's console room felt very organic, as though it were perhaps what the TARDIS truly looked like, beneath the bells and whistles.
"Beautiful, isn't she," the Doctor said from the other side of the console.
River looked down from her contemplation of the soaring time rotor. He wore the jumper and leather jacket she recognized from the Book of Faces, and had a cup of tea in hand. "Good morning, Doctor," she said. "Yes, she is. How are you -"
"Fine," the Doctor said abruptly. River crossed her arms over her chest and raised an eyebrow. "Better," he amended. "Not fine, not . . . not yet." He drained his teacup and set it on the edge of the console. "I should be going."
She smiled, trailing a hand along a coral strut. "Places to go, things to see, planets to save."
"Apparently so. Not sure where to begin, really. Never thought there'd be an after."
River paused thoughtfully. "If you don't mind me saying, London in 2005 is quite interesting. Or so I hear."
"I'll keep that in mind. Actually, guess I won't, since I won't remember any of this soon enough." He frowned. "Come to think of it, what's to keep me from heading straight out that door once I wake up?"
She shrugged. "When I set the TARDIS to take you into the vortex, I can program in a delay to give myself a minute or two to get out."
The Doctor stared. "You can do that?"
She smiled. "Of course. Now, where would you like to do this?"
He shrugged. "Here's fine."
"You wouldn't rather wake up in your bed?"
The Doctor raised his eyes to the time rotor. "No."
Some things never changed. River nodded. "Right, then. Lie down, Doctor."
He was surprisingly docile as he lay down, not even flinching as she knelt over him. "River," he said, when she rested her fingers at his temples, preparing to send him into a deep sleep. "In the future. We're fantastic, aren't we?"
She smiled at him. "Yes, we are."
Memory modifications were disturbingly easy for a telepath of River's skill. It was the work of only a few moments for her to locate the Doctor's memories of the last twelve hours and set about changing them. It was not a straightforward wipe; that would have been easier and perhaps safer, temporally speaking, but it wasn't what was called for here. There were things she wanted him to keep: vague impressions having been looked after, cared for, loved. Most of all, she wanted him to hold onto the sense that there were things worth living for, things in his future worth having. These feelings she let him keep, even as she buried the memories of herself and their conversation deep inside his mind and locked them up tight.
And then, she created a key. Not because she couldn't bear for him to forget, but because she suspected she already had. She recalled her own Doctor's brief lapse in concentration when he'd presented her with the book, his vague, startled expression, the way he'd faltered mid-sentence and then kept going. When he showed her the picture of his ninth self in the Book of Faces, she decided, then and only then would he remember.
She withdrew carefully from his mind, traveling up through its depths like a diver from the deep. She paused briefly near the surface, unable to help herself. London, 2005, she whispered. Be sure to tell her it travels in time.
***
River watched the TARDIS disappear from within her hut. Then she waited.
It didn't take very long.
A second TARDIS, bright, brilliant blue with the St. John's Ambulance logo on the door, appeared right where the other one had been. River leaned in the doorway, arms crossed over her chest, and smiled in anticipation.
"River Song!" the Doctor said, bursting out of the TARDIS. "You bad, bad girl, you weren't supposed to let me remember!"
River grinned, delighted and unrepentant. "When have I ever done what I was supposed to do? That would be ever so - mmmm." She found herself suddenly pushed up against the side of the hut. The Doctor kissed her, long fingers buried in her hair, and then pulled away to look her in the eyes. "Hello sweetie," she said, just a little breathless.
His eyes were very serious. "I never thanked you. Not then. I couldn't. But you saved my life. Thank you, River Song."
She cupped the side of his face in her hand. "You'd have been all right."
The Doctor shook his head. "No. I don't think so. When I woke up on the floor of the TARDIS, wearing clothes I only vaguely recalled putting on and no idea how I'd spent the last twelve hours . . . normally that'd have driven me mad. But all I could think was that it was all right. Whatever had happened was good, and I'd go on and be fantastic. Without you," he shook his head, "without you, River, I really don't know . . ."
He kissed her again in lieu of finishing his sentence. When he let her up for air, River leaned back and looked at him. "Your place or mine?"
He glanced over her shoulder into the tiny hut that he had left behind minutes and lifetimes ago. River thought about curling up in the bed with his former self last night, waiting for the nightmares to come, and hoped he decided to stay. "Yours," he said at last.
"Good answer," River said. She hooked two fingers into his bowtie and pulled him inside.
Fin.