Fanfiction: Honour Thy Father Chapter 3
Chapter 3
Scrapbook of Aftermaths and Memorials
Then Manhattan happened. And the Weeping Angels.
That changed everything.
No time to say what he had planned now. No time to talk to her as his daughter. He never got to say goodbye. Only "Hello, River" when she showed up in front of him. He should have known she would, sooner or later.
In fact, he acted like regular old Rory. Rory before Demon’s Run and Berlin. Like nothing ever happened. But after the paradox that saved he and Amy, the Doctor promised they were going to a pub. Family outing as River called it with a big grin. He would have his chance to say everything he wanted there.
But he didn't. The gravestone and the Angel changed all that.
. . . . .
He was just suddenly there, standing in front of her and holding takeout coffee. She could tell by the way he wore his hair and the age in his face that it was after the Doctor stopped playing dead for him, but had he lived the days when they told her to go?
No time to ask if things were different now. Only "Hello, Dad".
Still. She grinned:
No one surrendered like her Dad. Shot those hands in the air with lightning speed. No one would ever know he was the bravest of all them.
And there she was, still showing off for her father. It'd be impossible to land the Tardis here. Even I couldn't do it.
But when they got through this, maybe they could work things out.
But they didn't. The gravestone and the Angel changed all that.
. . . . .
They changed everything except one bare fact:
No one knew more than Melody Pond how Amy and Rory should be together. She knew it before them. She saw it without the benefit of knowing the future. She made the first step for them when they wouldn't do it.
Her hearts broke in that cemetery, but she would never hurt her parents by keeping them apart just to save her the pain of losing them both.
That hand reaching out to her called her as much as her mother saying her name.
Melody said goodbye by taking her mother's hand and holding it in hers - hands that looked so much like Amy's -- before she kissed it and folded it over the spot where her lips had touched as if to keep it safe. As if it would seal the kiss there forever. When her mother reached her father and she embraced him, his daughter's kiss would touch him too, even if he didn't know it.
It was the only goodbye their family had, her kissing Amy's hand as her mother said her final words to her, while they held on to each other in front of Rory's gravestone. Their hands, the daughter's kiss, and the mother's words all translated into:
I love you. I love you.
It was all they had.
. . . . .
The Doctor whispered, “I'm sorry, River.” to a much younger version and told her how someday in her future, she would lose those parents with the love in their eyes and the way they embraced her that still kept the world at bay when she hurt.
Even a grown child needed that. Even a grown child felt that horrible aching void when that's taken away.
Especially when that child and those parents with the love in their eyes had finally found each other.
She wanted to run to them right then, and hold them tight, and imagine that would never go away. But she had to wait. It was like those years she spent as her first incarnation, tracking down who her parents were, where they were.
And oh the day young Melody had found them. There they were. Back again.
Took me years to find you two. I'm so glad I did.
It wasn't the way she had first planned it. Her mother wasn't the grownup Amy in her picture holding her as an infant; it wasn't the crayon drawings of the father charging to her rescue and whisking her away to be cared for. But they were here and they were hers.
After awhile, she realized the wonderful chance she had been given. In her past when the spaceman swallowed her, it carried her down a corridor until it reached two men and a woman.
Her mother! Her mother - here! Help me!
Her mother shot her.
Then she only demand answers even as Melody begged her: Please help me.
She didn't take her away. All Amy had done was demand Who are you? Just please tell me, because I don't understand!
Why hadn't she understood? How could she not make the connection? She had just looked at the picture of them together, mother and daughter. And all the other pictures of her: why would all those pictures be together if she wasn't that baby that Amy was holding?
They said her mother was a time traveler; she understood that odd things happened, twisted and turned into new shapes - she had seen it happen a hundred different times - why didn't she make the connection?
Even if she couldn't, why didn't she help?
Help me, please!
Her caretakers were right: the Doctor poisoned her mother. Poisoned her against her own daughter.
So in the end, Melody Pond helped herself. Even when it came to finding her parents.
Now she had the chance to undo Amy's future. Now she had time before the Doctor! What if - if she just made her mother love her? Then maybe she would help, then maybe her mother would choose her instead of the Doctor.
It hadn't worked that way. The Doctor still replaced her as the best friend. Her mother still shot at her.
But Amy still loved her, so much so that she had named her baby after her. After her daughter. So she had made a big part of her dream come true. She had found them and they loved her.
The only day better than that was waking up in the hospital because they were there, leaning over her with all the love and care she had dreamed of: Mother and Dad.
Now she had to know when she could go to them without crossing her timeline and running into herself. She had everything after Berlin to the day the Doctor had just given as their last. An older version would obviously know when a younger version used one of those visits, but a younger River had no clue if an older version was already there.
The Tardis knew; she existed in all points of time. She knew where every Melody Pond was at any given second.
So River synced the calendar she made with the Tardis. Several years: she had several years with parents that they looked at her with that same love they had when she woke up in the hospital. It wasn't eternity, it wasn't even a decade, but it was still several years, she reminded herself.
The Tardis then gave a sorry little noise before she removed the majority of those years when her parents were alive in Leadworth and on the Tardis herself. Everything from shortly after the second Christmas and beyond was gone.
NO!
“Why!” River demanded and the Tardis hummed sadly. It was the same answer on how her parents would die. When their family would be split apart again, this time forever:
Spoilers.
“But -” Their last Christmases. Their last birthdays and anniversaries. Their last days. Gone.
Why?
Spoilers.
. . . . .
She found out why when she dared to go on that last day she was told she could visit. She should have known better.
Because of you!
If we didn't have you -!
If you weren't born -!
Go away!
“We can't have children,” is what they told everyone else.
They even said it to each other.
. . . . .
“Why?” the young Melody inside her kept asking, the Melody who had been stolen and the one who searched for years. The one who saw her mother in Florida and kept begging her Help me!
“I just got them back!” the second Melody cried, the one that thrilled at finding them and the one that put them together. The one who had told them who she was and how glad she was to have them.
River, who was made up of them and the third, more experienced Melody - the last Melody, the one who had brought their family back together again, bundled them where they existed inside herself and hushed them with memories. She wrapped them all in the name River Song with the comfort of a soft blanket and the protection of a shield.
. . . . .
River called the Tardis and asked for coordinates when the Doctor would be out on one of his adventures, leaving the ship by herself to wait. That meant she and River could talk alone. They made a sight, the woman and the blue box talking in a field.
Mels and younger Rivers often told themselves that it was silly to be jealous of her one month old self, just because that was the child her parents wanted. Always wondering if she could do something - become someone they would love as much and would wish she’d come home with the same feeling as they did for the one month old daughter. Be their Melody as much as the newborn was.
But now even one month old her wasn't good enough, because she had ruined everything.
The answer was obvious. Except the Tardis refused. It was the biggest row they ever had; maybe the only fight they ever really had.
No, the Tardis insisted.
“Yes!” River argued back.
If I chose to give it, I still could not. The Doctor had already searched in her timeline for a safe spot to bring baby Melody home to her parents. It couldn't be done. What River sought was even greater. She asked to never exist so her parents could have the children they wanted.
River raged and screamed and argued, but the Tardis kept having to say the same thing: I am sorry -- for the sake of her child's hurting, not for herself who selfishly was glad she would keep her daughter.
Melody must be born and taken. Mels must struggle and be programmed. River must recover and thrive.
Or reality would be destroyed.
. . . . .
She thought she could handle it.
She went to see them at the first Christmas crossed out against her on the calendar and stood outside, looking at them through the windows. How happy they were. The lights from the tree splashed colours in Amy's bright hair as her head fell back in a laugh from rubbing biscuit batter down Rory's nose. He grabbed her and rubbed it back into her neck as she must have shrieked and he laughed too.
She was so glad they were happy.
But it didn't stop the feeling of being the one outside in the cold.
She used up one of the all important dates she hoarded and appeared outside their front door on the last Boxing Day she could visit. She ran into Amy's arms without a hello or a Happy Christmas. Her younger version had covered that anyway when she had spent Christmas Eve and the big day itself here, leaving just earlier this morning.
The stocking they had bought her the previous year was still out and in its place next to theirs. She tried keeping the tears back, but she just clutched her mother harder.
“What is it?” Rory asked. He kept looking back to Amy frantically, as if she somehow knew.
River leaned against the hand he laid on her shoulder. “I just wanted to see you.”
. . . . .
Manhattan changed it all again. The day she knew was coming finally came. She knew now the when and the how and the where of it.
She held onto that feeling of Amy's hand in hers.
. . . . .
I know you're not alright. But hold tight, Amy, because you're going to be.
It's me. I'm Melody. I'm your daughter.
They had been more than 'alright' for a little while. It had been everything.
. . . . .
Demon's Run - bringing herself back to her parents when their older selves had told her to stay away. Standing at the end of the month when her mother had all her daughter's incarnations in her life for the second time, something that rarely happened even on Gallifrey. Sending them forward as she went backwards to them not knowing her, and the fear that the time to say goodbye forever was the next time she'd see them.
. . . . .
Utah and biting back what she knew about the Doctor in a Teselecta, wishing she could grab their bowtie before it’s burned, and a Ganger mother filling in for pregnant Amy on Demon’s Run. The nightmares of her childhood reaching out to grab her father; she had to stifle screaming DAD! like she wanted and instead had to use RORY!
Florida with her and her first incarnation running around their parents, while the second waited in Leadworth for them to come home. Her father never being there when little Melody was around, and her mother always, always aiming that gun and begging to understand.
The Pandorica with her and her mother spending 2000 years inside a box: both put there to save them from death at the unwilling hands of someone who loved them. Her mother watched over by a lone Centurion. She watched over by the Tardis in her other mother's final act before her death across time that would restart the universe.
Too soon, the Byzantium, a young Doctor,, her father not there at all, and her mother saying, “Aren't you going to introduce us?”
. . . . .
You are creating fixed time! I will never be able to see you again!
. . . . .
River wrote the Melody Malone book, one of the easiest things she had ever done since it was sitting right there in published form. (It was known for being the only other book outside of Rex Stout's that didn't need editing. “It's like we already went through it,” the publisher said in interviews.) She bundled it up with the passports and all the other legal paperwork Rory and Amy would need for their new life, then gathered gold, gems, and other valuables that would hold their worth unlike the appropriate currency for America 1938.
She went back to Manhattan to a time far enough in the past to avoid the wake of temporal instability eddying out of New York into the past and future, the way the cracks from the Tardis' explosion once ebbed throughout time and space. If she got too close to that Time “fault line” now running through Manhattan, she risked her parents' lives. The distortion would be triggered into an explosion by the artron energy absorbed by any time traveler, like a gas leak by a flame. Amy and Rory couldn’t leave -- since the fixed time would trigger a paradox and destruction -- and even if they could, they couldn’t return to fulfill the fixed point because their artron energy would cause destruction. So they had to stay and she couldn’t go to them.
So she traveled back to 1876. She spread the wealth she had collected into private vaults she seeded throughout the city. Figuring she might as well get some fun out of the trip, River popped over to the American Centennial celebration in Philadelphia and had images made of her with Alexander Graham Bell and Andrew Carnegie, both large with Scottish pride at the Exposition's Machinery Hall. She included those in her package for her mother's sake; Amy would love those. She even tracked down the original “devil car” and had an artist sketch of her with it for her father to grin over.
She researched which law firms existed in 1876 and would still be there in her parents' new time period, then entrusted each of them with a package of legal papers and a letter to one vault with a one line clue for that safe's combination: “the day the crack was fixed” read one; “the day I woke in the hospital” was a second; “the day of your first date” and so on. Any one of the packages would see them through their new lives, just in case any of the law offices failed her. Her mother and father were not going to suffer from being at Ground Zero of America's Great Depression or even from New York's problems at the beginning of World War II. They weren't going to suffer from lack of medical care either, because she stuffed the nursing supplies Rory liked best in each bundle.
Every law form had instructions to deliver it at the proper point of April 3rd, 1938 and she smoothed over the lawyers' protests about how they couldn't do such a thing with enough cash to cement their professional loyalty. The reason most of those law firms survived until 1938 was the investment River sunk into each them.
She included a letter filled with love and thanks for their being the best parents she had ever wished for as a young girl. She signed it, “I love you. Always. Your Melody.”
. . . . .
Interviews about the Melody Malone book spoke of a prequel, so River got a hold of it to write it out. She sent it happily with another letter to her mother and father.
. . . . .
She imagined them opening all those packages and felt all over again the feeling of Amy's hand. It was so important.
. . . . .
Especially:
When Anthony Brian Williams was sent alone to Leadworth with a note that never mentioned her, she held onto that feeling.
When her parents once more explained the complicated happenings of their lives, but not her...
When her little brother knew about their parents' time twisted experiences and the Doctor, but never was told he had a sister...
She held onto that feeling of her mother's hand in hers and that feeling of being loved. Her mother's profile, the only part of her mother's face she could see as Amy stared at the Angel so she wasn't taken before she said goodbye... the tears running down her cheeks making the tendrils of red hair blowing in the breeze stick to her skin.
And as her head turned to the Doctor, even in that less than a second, River's hearts clenched in a wordless This is it.
. . . . .
Right after Manhattan and the Angels, she wondered why her parents hadn't come to her when she was in New York; in those summer months in 1969 when she investigated the Silence's occupation of America, before she had to pretend to run away from Canton. More importantly, after she had just lived the devastation in Utah again, watching as her younger self came out of the lake and relived being in the damned suit. Being with two Doctors who had no idea she was his wife and the younger one telling her in no uncertain terms that he didn't trust her, that he would use every bit he knew about her already to hurt her because she wouldn't tell him something.
She could have used - no, she had needed her parents then. If she had known their older versions - a mother and father who knew who she was - were in the city, she would have immediately gone to them. They would be in their sixties... what would they be like? She tried picturing them in her mind.
Then she discovered Anthony Brian Williams.
Where Anthony Williams began, Melody Pond stopped.
Maybe it was the simple fact of 'out of sight, out of mind'.
Maybe they blamed her again that they had to adopt Anthony and not have children biologically.
Maybe, unlike Sarah Jane Smith and the Doctor, they had decided that changing diapers was the definitive statement of parenthood after all, and so she didn't qualify as their daughter.
Maybe it was the changes to her mother's timeline because she had sent the Doctor to her younger self in the Afterword of “Melody Malone”. Not that River, who was obviously there with her little mother for all five of those different timelines, could think of a change that explained it.
Maybe it was the fact they were pretending to be normal: they had said their goodbyes. Maybe they had finally made the decision they had talked about long ago and chose one life while they put everything about the other in the past. They were the Williams family now while she was a Pond.
She didn't know.
. . . . .
I wish I could tell you that you'll be loved.
But this isn't a time for lies.
. . . . .
The Doctor insisted, “You have to tell your grandparents that they have a granddaughter.”
But she shook her head. “You know I can't.”
“Why ever not!”
Because her parents had their reasons for not telling her grandparents about her.
Because if Rory and Amy had wanted anyone to know they had a daughter, they would have told them so themselves. The way they had told people about the Doctor and, in even a more telling move, had made him a part of their everyday lives.
The way they made sure their parents knew about the time twisted, complex truths of New York and their son. But not her.
She didn't know why, but she knew this:
“I will not disrespect them by going against their wishes!”
Melody. Be a good girl.
The Doctor's head bowed over his folded hands where he sat slumped on the floor of the console room's center ring and he nodded.
. . . . .
“Someone's a Daddy's girl!” he once teased her with a smirk, bouncing up on his toes and back on his heels catching her behavior with Rory.
“Oh shut it.” She had grinned back.
After Manhattan, he never said it again.
. . . . .
She always referred to her parents in the present tense, even though she was always in their past from the moment the Doctor said they had died.
After Manhattan, she used the past tense instead.
. . . . .
What you are going to be, Melody, is very, very brave.
. . . . .
She watched over her grandparents. Over Brian who much later met a lovely widow with children and grandchildren, and found some peace with them as well as with his older-than-him grandson in his final years. Over Tabitha and Augustus who eventually couldn't bear the reminders in Leadworth, and went home to Scotland and other Ponds.
Both Brian and Augustus kept their Father's Day books and regaled Anthony and everyone else with stories about their children.
And one day, Brian dug up an old, battered trinket that had worked its way down into the ground with the same trowel he had used against a pterodactyl. While Augustus saw a mate trip over his wife's handbag and curse, “That woman!”
They both stopped to think: I wonder if the Doctor ever married that archeologist?
. . . . .
River kept watch over Anthony as well in the time she knew about him. She took care of him from a distance and smoothed out the obstacles he faced in life whenever she could, backtracking his timeline as far as she could go with the temporal fault line running through much of his life.
Passport problems preventing him from going to England and meeting his grandparents were easily untangled; all he knew was the phone call that came saying everything was fine after all and to enjoy his trip.
A mugger that attacked him inadvertently tripped over nothing (River's foot sweeping his legs from a dark corner in the alley) and was knocked out from the fall (actually from the right hook she inherited from Rory and a little mnemosine recall-wipe vapour so the thief didn't remember the punch) while Anthony was running off to get the police.
People often joked that he had someone watching over him. He would grin and say in the American accent that was so much like his unknown sister’s original one: it was probably his Mom and Dad keeping an eye on him from up above. “It's got a very Williams feel about it.”
He didn't know it was true.
And since he never knew about his older sister, he couldn't be sad that he outlived her.
. . . . .
She's a good girl!
. . . . .
Her father's death in 1989 and her mother being alone for the five years after it kept nagging at River. If she could be by his side to say goodbye, maybe they could heal whatever this rift was that made her parents separate her from her family. Maybe she'd have her mother again if she could be with Amy as they really lost Rory with no chance of his coming back. It tempted her mercilessly until it nearly overrode what she knew she risked by time traveling near the instability.
She traveled back to the right time in upstate New York and rented a car. She drove to the edge of the weakened temporal fault line and then walked towards it. It crackled like a force field as it reacted to her artron energy and its weakened state grew stronger off the potency of such a time traveler and a child of the Vortex.
River stepped back.
Her mother had Anthony; she wasn't alone.
Going into the city jeopardized her father, her mother and brother as well as everyone else in New York. The same reason Amy and Rory had never been able to leave, even for a visit, and then go back to fulfill the fixed point.
She stayed away.
. . . . .
The Doctor had gone to Tabitha, Augustus, and Brian to tell them what had happened; meaning the Tardis dumped him on their doorsteps and threw him outside.
He found that Anthony with his notes from his parents had already explained everything. The Ponds and Brian eventually forgave him (which was why his ship had dumped him here); maybe because their Amelia and Rory lived happy lives.
They held a joint memorial service, even though any funeral had already happened in New York.
The Doctor didn't attend. River did.
She stood in the back of the crowd and watched as the headstones were put between Rory's mother and another uninhabited grave bearing the name Melody Zucker. Her brother -- her brother! -- stopped at the stone and she saw him ask Tabitha Pond about it. She turned away, but still caught the sight of Anthony climbing into their father’s car before she left. She smiled, soft and a little sad, but still a smile as she imagined all the years Rory had told his son about that car. She wondered if he had bought one in 1966 when they were first made.
. . . . .
She had updated her final instructions for her own death with the Tardis after Manhattan, so her husband would know to bury her with her parents in New York. When she found out Anthony had no word about her, she changed her instructions again feeling she didn't have the right to be with them. Not to mention the trouble it could cause if her brother ever found out.
After the Library, the Tardis showed the Doctor both changes as well as why River had made each of them. His expression darkened when he heard about the last one. “That. Won't. Do.”
He barely seemed to fly the old girl to Manhattan 2012; the controls seemed to move themselves a millisecond before he moved them. But then, River was the Tardis' child and she had shown the removed instructions for a reason.
He didn’t want to be back here, standing at Rory and Amy’s graves and especially not when.... but it was where he was needed. He scattered some of River's ashes over her parents' graves -
- ashes since her body is a miracle. Even a dead one. There are whole empires out there who'd rip this world apart for just one cell.
He saved the rest to be spread in the Vortex. It was exactly the right end for his River, daughter of the Ponds and the Tardis.
Amy had been wrong years ago: there had been room for two more names on the gravestone. He carefully etched into the marble under where it spelled out Rory and Amy:
And their beloved daughter Melody Pond.
He leaned his head against the Tardis' door and whispered to his grieving blue box, “I never said how sorry I am that I lost your child.”
A long pause followed with the Tardis projecting comfort before he spoke through a watery, heartbroken smile. “She made us family, Old Girl. I know we already were, but she made us truly family.”
He never went back to see if Anthony returned to New York and found the engraving.
. . . . .
After Manhattan, she had one last visit on her calendar: the anniversary of waking up in the Sisters hospital and finding her Dad and Mum. She thought about using it immediately and have the balm of being with them soothe the pain from New York.
But she changed her mind. She was going to need that comfort when she would meet the Doctor for the last time and having that hurt added to the one of losing her parents. So she saved that last visit to be the goodbye to everyone she held in her hearts.
Only she didn't come back from her meeting the Doctor for the last time. That last possible visit to her parents was never used.
Amy and Rory waited for her that day in 2012. River never missed the important days. Never. They started to call a dozen different times; a dozen different times they told themselves they were overreacting. She was River Song. She was their daughter and had the Tardis in her; she made Daleks tremble and jumped off buildings. Things didn't happen to River that she didn't escape from sooner or later.
They picked at lunch and didn't even make anything to eat that night. When they couldn't take it anymore - because they knew, they knew River would at least send them a note or call - they got a message from her saying she was coming over tomorrow and was that alright with them? They blew out a collective breath and teased each other about who had been more worried.
They didn’t mention her being late for the anniversary because they figured she knew. She didn’t mention not showing up the previous day because she was a different River.
So Rory and Amy never knew about the Library.
. . . . .
Strackman Lux and River's university put a memorial stone to Professor River Song, for her great sacrifice by the Archeology campus.
But the Doctor treasured the memorial to her that spanned all the points in the history books, bearing art and prose for all she had done. He went back to the few places who didn't include her in their history and had them correct that mistake.
. . . . .
One of those corrections was the museum that held the final armour of the Last Centurion.
The updated display told how he had a daughter, with commissioned paintings of the smiling Centurion with tears in his eyes holding an infant in one; him in traditional Roman armour kissing the forehead of a young woman with braids, warm brown eyes a shade lighter than her skin, and a wicked smile; and the third portrait showing him with his grown daughter laughing together during sword lessons.
Historians feverishly searched for the identity of the Centurion's Daughter, puzzling over the different looks in the three portraits, and engaging in riot level debates over her similarity to River Song in the third painting.
The inscriptions for the three paintings were in Latin.
. . . . .
The display was in the Starship UK museum under the protection of Liz X. Next door was the display honouring Amy Pond.
Starship Scotland had an even larger one.
Side by side with the one of Jamie McCrimmon.
. . . . .
Starship Italy said they should have the Last Centurion exhibit since he was Roman. Liz X held up the documents giving the UK rights to his sword and armour, then gave them the British salute and told them to sod off.
There was a long exchange of rude gestures and angry words back and forth until everything settled down years later.
. . . . .
The Doctor also returned to Stormcage where River Song had served her sentences through generations of its guards. Generations more talked about her after she was gone, until she became a myth that survived long after the prison itself was shut down for a newer one. Prison guards after her would buck up someone who failed to do the impossible with, “Oi, it's not your fault. No one could have done it. You can't hold a Song.”
Eventually, they used it even though they had no idea how it started as the line blurred between the expression and the woman who could walk through the prison walls like they weren't even there.
On some sad nights for quite awhile after she had died, the Doctor would slip quietly into her old cells and mimic her handwriting to scrawl on the walls “Miss me?” or “Hello, boys” with her signature or a little figure sketched below it.
To freak people out.
The current prisoner would wake up and bellow for the guards.
Her myth grew.
. . . . .
As for his visits to the Library's orbit and her flourishing in its core...
Well, that's between her and him, eh?
. . . . .
The Tardis had a secret. She had grown a nodule not long ago in a remote room no one else knew existed. She grew it slowly and with the delicate artisan’s touch of a glassblower during idle times, so she wasn't using energy the Doctor might need at an important moment. When she deemed it ready, she broke it off. It was still of her, but it had to be separate.
River's coffin.
It had the same appearance and glow of the Tardis herself if the chameleon circuit was turned off, revealing who she was under her layer of the blue box.
Amy Pond carried Melody at the beginning of her life. The Tardis would be the mother that carried her at the end of that life.
. . . . .
The Tardis didn't care what anyone else thought. She still considered River a gift she and the Ponds had given each other. From the moment her own consciousness awakened and existed in all Time, she reveled in the Child that was her future, present, and past, and thanked the pretty one and the orangey girl who gave her such a precious gift. So she archived their things together: Rory's nursing bag and small med-pack; the prayer leaf Lorna Bucket gave Amy; River's utility belt and archeologist bag; Amy's diary (in both hers and Rory's handwriting) for their slim number of visits with their daughter, the dusty box of pictures and mementos from the Ponds’ house including Rory's picture of young Melody, and the picture of Amy holding baby Melody.
River's diary of her relationship with the Doctor was stored with his elsewhere in the Tardis, for the day her Thief might be ready to look at it. That hadn’t happened yet; he had only blindly retrieved it unable to look at it even for that brief time.
River's lab, her section of the library, and her room for those nights she didn't share with the Doctor were stored deep in the ship and kept exactly as she left them.
For herself, the only TT Capsule to have a child of flesh and blood, the Tardis mourned her loss by telling her sisters during their days while Gallifrey still lived. The other ships buzzed amongst themselves over such a thing even happening and they clamored for details. It only added to the buzz around her - the one who would steal/was stealing/stole a Time Lord, exploring the universe, being put in a human body; the one whose famous name of Tardis would become the name for them all ... of course she would have the flesh and blood child.
She shared the experience of River laughing and how it filled all the empty spaces; of the feel of her feet and fingertips as she went through the corridors, worked the controls, or puttered in her lab and library; of how she taught her child to fly and so many other things, including the exhilaration of the Vortex and traveling in it so naturally when you are already a part of it; of how her daughter would curl up under the console and they would just talk - actually fully and completely talk with one another. Sharing frustrations and bright laughter over their “beautiful idiot”; of how River once laughed that their chameleon circuits were both broken so they were happily stuck in these forms; or when her child hacked into the Justice Department's data to change the Tardis record from 'Listed as Stolen' to 'Confessed to Stealing a Time Lord'.
And the glorious moments when her child would leap into her maternal hold from somewhere in the universe, all vibrant light and energy, or beaten down, the Song muted, and needing her.
They would sing together, just like those moments of a developing Melody glowing golden in utero as she listened and moved to the Gallifreyan lullaby the ancient ship sang for her.
Then her sisters mourned with her over the point when the River would come no more, starting with the night of the Singing Towers when it is/would be/was the last time her child was with her. How River kissed her fingertips when asked and touched them to the heart of the Tardis before she unknowingly walked out the doors for the last time. How they were separated in the Library and didn't have a goodbye there; just the Tardis alone all those minutes, knowing what would happen, and then feeling that wonderful brightness that bonded them violently snuffed out. Gone. There was nothing she could do but wait as she always did until her Doctor came back, oblivious that she was in mourning.
Her sisters comforted her as best they could.
Just as her child comforted her in the loss of her sisters.
chapter 1 chapter 2 chapter 3 chapter 4
Scrapbook of Aftermaths and Memorials
Then Manhattan happened. And the Weeping Angels.
That changed everything.
No time to say what he had planned now. No time to talk to her as his daughter. He never got to say goodbye. Only "Hello, River" when she showed up in front of him. He should have known she would, sooner or later.
In fact, he acted like regular old Rory. Rory before Demon’s Run and Berlin. Like nothing ever happened. But after the paradox that saved he and Amy, the Doctor promised they were going to a pub. Family outing as River called it with a big grin. He would have his chance to say everything he wanted there.
But he didn't. The gravestone and the Angel changed all that.
. . . . .
He was just suddenly there, standing in front of her and holding takeout coffee. She could tell by the way he wore his hair and the age in his face that it was after the Doctor stopped playing dead for him, but had he lived the days when they told her to go?
No time to ask if things were different now. Only "Hello, Dad".
Still. She grinned:
No one surrendered like her Dad. Shot those hands in the air with lightning speed. No one would ever know he was the bravest of all them.
And there she was, still showing off for her father. It'd be impossible to land the Tardis here. Even I couldn't do it.
But when they got through this, maybe they could work things out.
But they didn't. The gravestone and the Angel changed all that.
. . . . .
They changed everything except one bare fact:
No one knew more than Melody Pond how Amy and Rory should be together. She knew it before them. She saw it without the benefit of knowing the future. She made the first step for them when they wouldn't do it.
Her hearts broke in that cemetery, but she would never hurt her parents by keeping them apart just to save her the pain of losing them both.
That hand reaching out to her called her as much as her mother saying her name.
Melody said goodbye by taking her mother's hand and holding it in hers - hands that looked so much like Amy's -- before she kissed it and folded it over the spot where her lips had touched as if to keep it safe. As if it would seal the kiss there forever. When her mother reached her father and she embraced him, his daughter's kiss would touch him too, even if he didn't know it.
It was the only goodbye their family had, her kissing Amy's hand as her mother said her final words to her, while they held on to each other in front of Rory's gravestone. Their hands, the daughter's kiss, and the mother's words all translated into:
I love you. I love you.
It was all they had.
. . . . .
The Doctor whispered, “I'm sorry, River.” to a much younger version and told her how someday in her future, she would lose those parents with the love in their eyes and the way they embraced her that still kept the world at bay when she hurt.
Even a grown child needed that. Even a grown child felt that horrible aching void when that's taken away.
Especially when that child and those parents with the love in their eyes had finally found each other.
She wanted to run to them right then, and hold them tight, and imagine that would never go away. But she had to wait. It was like those years she spent as her first incarnation, tracking down who her parents were, where they were.
And oh the day young Melody had found them. There they were. Back again.
Took me years to find you two. I'm so glad I did.
It wasn't the way she had first planned it. Her mother wasn't the grownup Amy in her picture holding her as an infant; it wasn't the crayon drawings of the father charging to her rescue and whisking her away to be cared for. But they were here and they were hers.
After awhile, she realized the wonderful chance she had been given. In her past when the spaceman swallowed her, it carried her down a corridor until it reached two men and a woman.
Her mother! Her mother - here! Help me!
Her mother shot her.
Then she only demand answers even as Melody begged her: Please help me.
She didn't take her away. All Amy had done was demand Who are you? Just please tell me, because I don't understand!
Why hadn't she understood? How could she not make the connection? She had just looked at the picture of them together, mother and daughter. And all the other pictures of her: why would all those pictures be together if she wasn't that baby that Amy was holding?
They said her mother was a time traveler; she understood that odd things happened, twisted and turned into new shapes - she had seen it happen a hundred different times - why didn't she make the connection?
Even if she couldn't, why didn't she help?
Help me, please!
Her caretakers were right: the Doctor poisoned her mother. Poisoned her against her own daughter.
So in the end, Melody Pond helped herself. Even when it came to finding her parents.
Now she had the chance to undo Amy's future. Now she had time before the Doctor! What if - if she just made her mother love her? Then maybe she would help, then maybe her mother would choose her instead of the Doctor.
It hadn't worked that way. The Doctor still replaced her as the best friend. Her mother still shot at her.
But Amy still loved her, so much so that she had named her baby after her. After her daughter. So she had made a big part of her dream come true. She had found them and they loved her.
The only day better than that was waking up in the hospital because they were there, leaning over her with all the love and care she had dreamed of: Mother and Dad.
Now she had to know when she could go to them without crossing her timeline and running into herself. She had everything after Berlin to the day the Doctor had just given as their last. An older version would obviously know when a younger version used one of those visits, but a younger River had no clue if an older version was already there.
The Tardis knew; she existed in all points of time. She knew where every Melody Pond was at any given second.
So River synced the calendar she made with the Tardis. Several years: she had several years with parents that they looked at her with that same love they had when she woke up in the hospital. It wasn't eternity, it wasn't even a decade, but it was still several years, she reminded herself.
The Tardis then gave a sorry little noise before she removed the majority of those years when her parents were alive in Leadworth and on the Tardis herself. Everything from shortly after the second Christmas and beyond was gone.
NO!
“Why!” River demanded and the Tardis hummed sadly. It was the same answer on how her parents would die. When their family would be split apart again, this time forever:
Spoilers.
“But -” Their last Christmases. Their last birthdays and anniversaries. Their last days. Gone.
Why?
Spoilers.
. . . . .
She found out why when she dared to go on that last day she was told she could visit. She should have known better.
Because of you!
If we didn't have you -!
If you weren't born -!
Go away!
“We can't have children,” is what they told everyone else.
They even said it to each other.
. . . . .
“Why?” the young Melody inside her kept asking, the Melody who had been stolen and the one who searched for years. The one who saw her mother in Florida and kept begging her Help me!
“I just got them back!” the second Melody cried, the one that thrilled at finding them and the one that put them together. The one who had told them who she was and how glad she was to have them.
River, who was made up of them and the third, more experienced Melody - the last Melody, the one who had brought their family back together again, bundled them where they existed inside herself and hushed them with memories. She wrapped them all in the name River Song with the comfort of a soft blanket and the protection of a shield.
. . . . .
River called the Tardis and asked for coordinates when the Doctor would be out on one of his adventures, leaving the ship by herself to wait. That meant she and River could talk alone. They made a sight, the woman and the blue box talking in a field.
Mels and younger Rivers often told themselves that it was silly to be jealous of her one month old self, just because that was the child her parents wanted. Always wondering if she could do something - become someone they would love as much and would wish she’d come home with the same feeling as they did for the one month old daughter. Be their Melody as much as the newborn was.
But now even one month old her wasn't good enough, because she had ruined everything.
The answer was obvious. Except the Tardis refused. It was the biggest row they ever had; maybe the only fight they ever really had.
No, the Tardis insisted.
“Yes!” River argued back.
If I chose to give it, I still could not. The Doctor had already searched in her timeline for a safe spot to bring baby Melody home to her parents. It couldn't be done. What River sought was even greater. She asked to never exist so her parents could have the children they wanted.
River raged and screamed and argued, but the Tardis kept having to say the same thing: I am sorry -- for the sake of her child's hurting, not for herself who selfishly was glad she would keep her daughter.
Melody must be born and taken. Mels must struggle and be programmed. River must recover and thrive.
Or reality would be destroyed.
. . . . .
She thought she could handle it.
She went to see them at the first Christmas crossed out against her on the calendar and stood outside, looking at them through the windows. How happy they were. The lights from the tree splashed colours in Amy's bright hair as her head fell back in a laugh from rubbing biscuit batter down Rory's nose. He grabbed her and rubbed it back into her neck as she must have shrieked and he laughed too.
She was so glad they were happy.
But it didn't stop the feeling of being the one outside in the cold.
She used up one of the all important dates she hoarded and appeared outside their front door on the last Boxing Day she could visit. She ran into Amy's arms without a hello or a Happy Christmas. Her younger version had covered that anyway when she had spent Christmas Eve and the big day itself here, leaving just earlier this morning.
The stocking they had bought her the previous year was still out and in its place next to theirs. She tried keeping the tears back, but she just clutched her mother harder.
“What is it?” Rory asked. He kept looking back to Amy frantically, as if she somehow knew.
River leaned against the hand he laid on her shoulder. “I just wanted to see you.”
. . . . .
Manhattan changed it all again. The day she knew was coming finally came. She knew now the when and the how and the where of it.
She held onto that feeling of Amy's hand in hers.
. . . . .
I know you're not alright. But hold tight, Amy, because you're going to be.
It's me. I'm Melody. I'm your daughter.
They had been more than 'alright' for a little while. It had been everything.
. . . . .
Demon's Run - bringing herself back to her parents when their older selves had told her to stay away. Standing at the end of the month when her mother had all her daughter's incarnations in her life for the second time, something that rarely happened even on Gallifrey. Sending them forward as she went backwards to them not knowing her, and the fear that the time to say goodbye forever was the next time she'd see them.
. . . . .
Utah and biting back what she knew about the Doctor in a Teselecta, wishing she could grab their bowtie before it’s burned, and a Ganger mother filling in for pregnant Amy on Demon’s Run. The nightmares of her childhood reaching out to grab her father; she had to stifle screaming DAD! like she wanted and instead had to use RORY!
Florida with her and her first incarnation running around their parents, while the second waited in Leadworth for them to come home. Her father never being there when little Melody was around, and her mother always, always aiming that gun and begging to understand.
The Pandorica with her and her mother spending 2000 years inside a box: both put there to save them from death at the unwilling hands of someone who loved them. Her mother watched over by a lone Centurion. She watched over by the Tardis in her other mother's final act before her death across time that would restart the universe.
Too soon, the Byzantium, a young Doctor,, her father not there at all, and her mother saying, “Aren't you going to introduce us?”
. . . . .
You are creating fixed time! I will never be able to see you again!
. . . . .
River wrote the Melody Malone book, one of the easiest things she had ever done since it was sitting right there in published form. (It was known for being the only other book outside of Rex Stout's that didn't need editing. “It's like we already went through it,” the publisher said in interviews.) She bundled it up with the passports and all the other legal paperwork Rory and Amy would need for their new life, then gathered gold, gems, and other valuables that would hold their worth unlike the appropriate currency for America 1938.
She went back to Manhattan to a time far enough in the past to avoid the wake of temporal instability eddying out of New York into the past and future, the way the cracks from the Tardis' explosion once ebbed throughout time and space. If she got too close to that Time “fault line” now running through Manhattan, she risked her parents' lives. The distortion would be triggered into an explosion by the artron energy absorbed by any time traveler, like a gas leak by a flame. Amy and Rory couldn’t leave -- since the fixed time would trigger a paradox and destruction -- and even if they could, they couldn’t return to fulfill the fixed point because their artron energy would cause destruction. So they had to stay and she couldn’t go to them.
So she traveled back to 1876. She spread the wealth she had collected into private vaults she seeded throughout the city. Figuring she might as well get some fun out of the trip, River popped over to the American Centennial celebration in Philadelphia and had images made of her with Alexander Graham Bell and Andrew Carnegie, both large with Scottish pride at the Exposition's Machinery Hall. She included those in her package for her mother's sake; Amy would love those. She even tracked down the original “devil car” and had an artist sketch of her with it for her father to grin over.
She researched which law firms existed in 1876 and would still be there in her parents' new time period, then entrusted each of them with a package of legal papers and a letter to one vault with a one line clue for that safe's combination: “the day the crack was fixed” read one; “the day I woke in the hospital” was a second; “the day of your first date” and so on. Any one of the packages would see them through their new lives, just in case any of the law offices failed her. Her mother and father were not going to suffer from being at Ground Zero of America's Great Depression or even from New York's problems at the beginning of World War II. They weren't going to suffer from lack of medical care either, because she stuffed the nursing supplies Rory liked best in each bundle.
Every law form had instructions to deliver it at the proper point of April 3rd, 1938 and she smoothed over the lawyers' protests about how they couldn't do such a thing with enough cash to cement their professional loyalty. The reason most of those law firms survived until 1938 was the investment River sunk into each them.
She included a letter filled with love and thanks for their being the best parents she had ever wished for as a young girl. She signed it, “I love you. Always. Your Melody.”
. . . . .
Interviews about the Melody Malone book spoke of a prequel, so River got a hold of it to write it out. She sent it happily with another letter to her mother and father.
. . . . .
She imagined them opening all those packages and felt all over again the feeling of Amy's hand. It was so important.
. . . . .
Especially:
When Anthony Brian Williams was sent alone to Leadworth with a note that never mentioned her, she held onto that feeling.
When her parents once more explained the complicated happenings of their lives, but not her...
When her little brother knew about their parents' time twisted experiences and the Doctor, but never was told he had a sister...
She held onto that feeling of her mother's hand in hers and that feeling of being loved. Her mother's profile, the only part of her mother's face she could see as Amy stared at the Angel so she wasn't taken before she said goodbye... the tears running down her cheeks making the tendrils of red hair blowing in the breeze stick to her skin.
And as her head turned to the Doctor, even in that less than a second, River's hearts clenched in a wordless This is it.
. . . . .
Right after Manhattan and the Angels, she wondered why her parents hadn't come to her when she was in New York; in those summer months in 1969 when she investigated the Silence's occupation of America, before she had to pretend to run away from Canton. More importantly, after she had just lived the devastation in Utah again, watching as her younger self came out of the lake and relived being in the damned suit. Being with two Doctors who had no idea she was his wife and the younger one telling her in no uncertain terms that he didn't trust her, that he would use every bit he knew about her already to hurt her because she wouldn't tell him something.
She could have used - no, she had needed her parents then. If she had known their older versions - a mother and father who knew who she was - were in the city, she would have immediately gone to them. They would be in their sixties... what would they be like? She tried picturing them in her mind.
Then she discovered Anthony Brian Williams.
Where Anthony Williams began, Melody Pond stopped.
Maybe it was the simple fact of 'out of sight, out of mind'.
Maybe they blamed her again that they had to adopt Anthony and not have children biologically.
Maybe, unlike Sarah Jane Smith and the Doctor, they had decided that changing diapers was the definitive statement of parenthood after all, and so she didn't qualify as their daughter.
Maybe it was the changes to her mother's timeline because she had sent the Doctor to her younger self in the Afterword of “Melody Malone”. Not that River, who was obviously there with her little mother for all five of those different timelines, could think of a change that explained it.
Maybe it was the fact they were pretending to be normal: they had said their goodbyes. Maybe they had finally made the decision they had talked about long ago and chose one life while they put everything about the other in the past. They were the Williams family now while she was a Pond.
She didn't know.
. . . . .
I wish I could tell you that you'll be loved.
But this isn't a time for lies.
. . . . .
The Doctor insisted, “You have to tell your grandparents that they have a granddaughter.”
But she shook her head. “You know I can't.”
“Why ever not!”
Because her parents had their reasons for not telling her grandparents about her.
Because if Rory and Amy had wanted anyone to know they had a daughter, they would have told them so themselves. The way they had told people about the Doctor and, in even a more telling move, had made him a part of their everyday lives.
The way they made sure their parents knew about the time twisted, complex truths of New York and their son. But not her.
She didn't know why, but she knew this:
“I will not disrespect them by going against their wishes!”
Melody. Be a good girl.
The Doctor's head bowed over his folded hands where he sat slumped on the floor of the console room's center ring and he nodded.
. . . . .
“Someone's a Daddy's girl!” he once teased her with a smirk, bouncing up on his toes and back on his heels catching her behavior with Rory.
“Oh shut it.” She had grinned back.
After Manhattan, he never said it again.
. . . . .
She always referred to her parents in the present tense, even though she was always in their past from the moment the Doctor said they had died.
After Manhattan, she used the past tense instead.
. . . . .
What you are going to be, Melody, is very, very brave.
. . . . .
She watched over her grandparents. Over Brian who much later met a lovely widow with children and grandchildren, and found some peace with them as well as with his older-than-him grandson in his final years. Over Tabitha and Augustus who eventually couldn't bear the reminders in Leadworth, and went home to Scotland and other Ponds.
Both Brian and Augustus kept their Father's Day books and regaled Anthony and everyone else with stories about their children.
And one day, Brian dug up an old, battered trinket that had worked its way down into the ground with the same trowel he had used against a pterodactyl. While Augustus saw a mate trip over his wife's handbag and curse, “That woman!”
They both stopped to think: I wonder if the Doctor ever married that archeologist?
. . . . .
River kept watch over Anthony as well in the time she knew about him. She took care of him from a distance and smoothed out the obstacles he faced in life whenever she could, backtracking his timeline as far as she could go with the temporal fault line running through much of his life.
Passport problems preventing him from going to England and meeting his grandparents were easily untangled; all he knew was the phone call that came saying everything was fine after all and to enjoy his trip.
A mugger that attacked him inadvertently tripped over nothing (River's foot sweeping his legs from a dark corner in the alley) and was knocked out from the fall (actually from the right hook she inherited from Rory and a little mnemosine recall-wipe vapour so the thief didn't remember the punch) while Anthony was running off to get the police.
People often joked that he had someone watching over him. He would grin and say in the American accent that was so much like his unknown sister’s original one: it was probably his Mom and Dad keeping an eye on him from up above. “It's got a very Williams feel about it.”
He didn't know it was true.
And since he never knew about his older sister, he couldn't be sad that he outlived her.
. . . . .
She's a good girl!
. . . . .
Her father's death in 1989 and her mother being alone for the five years after it kept nagging at River. If she could be by his side to say goodbye, maybe they could heal whatever this rift was that made her parents separate her from her family. Maybe she'd have her mother again if she could be with Amy as they really lost Rory with no chance of his coming back. It tempted her mercilessly until it nearly overrode what she knew she risked by time traveling near the instability.
She traveled back to the right time in upstate New York and rented a car. She drove to the edge of the weakened temporal fault line and then walked towards it. It crackled like a force field as it reacted to her artron energy and its weakened state grew stronger off the potency of such a time traveler and a child of the Vortex.
River stepped back.
Her mother had Anthony; she wasn't alone.
Going into the city jeopardized her father, her mother and brother as well as everyone else in New York. The same reason Amy and Rory had never been able to leave, even for a visit, and then go back to fulfill the fixed point.
She stayed away.
. . . . .
The Doctor had gone to Tabitha, Augustus, and Brian to tell them what had happened; meaning the Tardis dumped him on their doorsteps and threw him outside.
He found that Anthony with his notes from his parents had already explained everything. The Ponds and Brian eventually forgave him (which was why his ship had dumped him here); maybe because their Amelia and Rory lived happy lives.
They held a joint memorial service, even though any funeral had already happened in New York.
The Doctor didn't attend. River did.
She stood in the back of the crowd and watched as the headstones were put between Rory's mother and another uninhabited grave bearing the name Melody Zucker. Her brother -- her brother! -- stopped at the stone and she saw him ask Tabitha Pond about it. She turned away, but still caught the sight of Anthony climbing into their father’s car before she left. She smiled, soft and a little sad, but still a smile as she imagined all the years Rory had told his son about that car. She wondered if he had bought one in 1966 when they were first made.
. . . . .
She had updated her final instructions for her own death with the Tardis after Manhattan, so her husband would know to bury her with her parents in New York. When she found out Anthony had no word about her, she changed her instructions again feeling she didn't have the right to be with them. Not to mention the trouble it could cause if her brother ever found out.
After the Library, the Tardis showed the Doctor both changes as well as why River had made each of them. His expression darkened when he heard about the last one. “That. Won't. Do.”
He barely seemed to fly the old girl to Manhattan 2012; the controls seemed to move themselves a millisecond before he moved them. But then, River was the Tardis' child and she had shown the removed instructions for a reason.
He didn’t want to be back here, standing at Rory and Amy’s graves and especially not when.... but it was where he was needed. He scattered some of River's ashes over her parents' graves -
- ashes since her body is a miracle. Even a dead one. There are whole empires out there who'd rip this world apart for just one cell.
He saved the rest to be spread in the Vortex. It was exactly the right end for his River, daughter of the Ponds and the Tardis.
Amy had been wrong years ago: there had been room for two more names on the gravestone. He carefully etched into the marble under where it spelled out Rory and Amy:
And their beloved daughter Melody Pond.
He leaned his head against the Tardis' door and whispered to his grieving blue box, “I never said how sorry I am that I lost your child.”
A long pause followed with the Tardis projecting comfort before he spoke through a watery, heartbroken smile. “She made us family, Old Girl. I know we already were, but she made us truly family.”
He never went back to see if Anthony returned to New York and found the engraving.
. . . . .
After Manhattan, she had one last visit on her calendar: the anniversary of waking up in the Sisters hospital and finding her Dad and Mum. She thought about using it immediately and have the balm of being with them soothe the pain from New York.
But she changed her mind. She was going to need that comfort when she would meet the Doctor for the last time and having that hurt added to the one of losing her parents. So she saved that last visit to be the goodbye to everyone she held in her hearts.
Only she didn't come back from her meeting the Doctor for the last time. That last possible visit to her parents was never used.
Amy and Rory waited for her that day in 2012. River never missed the important days. Never. They started to call a dozen different times; a dozen different times they told themselves they were overreacting. She was River Song. She was their daughter and had the Tardis in her; she made Daleks tremble and jumped off buildings. Things didn't happen to River that she didn't escape from sooner or later.
They picked at lunch and didn't even make anything to eat that night. When they couldn't take it anymore - because they knew, they knew River would at least send them a note or call - they got a message from her saying she was coming over tomorrow and was that alright with them? They blew out a collective breath and teased each other about who had been more worried.
They didn’t mention her being late for the anniversary because they figured she knew. She didn’t mention not showing up the previous day because she was a different River.
So Rory and Amy never knew about the Library.
. . . . .
Strackman Lux and River's university put a memorial stone to Professor River Song, for her great sacrifice by the Archeology campus.
But the Doctor treasured the memorial to her that spanned all the points in the history books, bearing art and prose for all she had done. He went back to the few places who didn't include her in their history and had them correct that mistake.
. . . . .
One of those corrections was the museum that held the final armour of the Last Centurion.
The updated display told how he had a daughter, with commissioned paintings of the smiling Centurion with tears in his eyes holding an infant in one; him in traditional Roman armour kissing the forehead of a young woman with braids, warm brown eyes a shade lighter than her skin, and a wicked smile; and the third portrait showing him with his grown daughter laughing together during sword lessons.
Historians feverishly searched for the identity of the Centurion's Daughter, puzzling over the different looks in the three portraits, and engaging in riot level debates over her similarity to River Song in the third painting.
The inscriptions for the three paintings were in Latin.
. . . . .
The display was in the Starship UK museum under the protection of Liz X. Next door was the display honouring Amy Pond.
Starship Scotland had an even larger one.
Side by side with the one of Jamie McCrimmon.
. . . . .
Starship Italy said they should have the Last Centurion exhibit since he was Roman. Liz X held up the documents giving the UK rights to his sword and armour, then gave them the British salute and told them to sod off.
There was a long exchange of rude gestures and angry words back and forth until everything settled down years later.
. . . . .
The Doctor also returned to Stormcage where River Song had served her sentences through generations of its guards. Generations more talked about her after she was gone, until she became a myth that survived long after the prison itself was shut down for a newer one. Prison guards after her would buck up someone who failed to do the impossible with, “Oi, it's not your fault. No one could have done it. You can't hold a Song.”
Eventually, they used it even though they had no idea how it started as the line blurred between the expression and the woman who could walk through the prison walls like they weren't even there.
On some sad nights for quite awhile after she had died, the Doctor would slip quietly into her old cells and mimic her handwriting to scrawl on the walls “Miss me?” or “Hello, boys” with her signature or a little figure sketched below it.
To freak people out.
The current prisoner would wake up and bellow for the guards.
Her myth grew.
. . . . .
As for his visits to the Library's orbit and her flourishing in its core...
Well, that's between her and him, eh?
. . . . .
The Tardis had a secret. She had grown a nodule not long ago in a remote room no one else knew existed. She grew it slowly and with the delicate artisan’s touch of a glassblower during idle times, so she wasn't using energy the Doctor might need at an important moment. When she deemed it ready, she broke it off. It was still of her, but it had to be separate.
River's coffin.
It had the same appearance and glow of the Tardis herself if the chameleon circuit was turned off, revealing who she was under her layer of the blue box.
Amy Pond carried Melody at the beginning of her life. The Tardis would be the mother that carried her at the end of that life.
. . . . .
The Tardis didn't care what anyone else thought. She still considered River a gift she and the Ponds had given each other. From the moment her own consciousness awakened and existed in all Time, she reveled in the Child that was her future, present, and past, and thanked the pretty one and the orangey girl who gave her such a precious gift. So she archived their things together: Rory's nursing bag and small med-pack; the prayer leaf Lorna Bucket gave Amy; River's utility belt and archeologist bag; Amy's diary (in both hers and Rory's handwriting) for their slim number of visits with their daughter, the dusty box of pictures and mementos from the Ponds’ house including Rory's picture of young Melody, and the picture of Amy holding baby Melody.
River's diary of her relationship with the Doctor was stored with his elsewhere in the Tardis, for the day her Thief might be ready to look at it. That hadn’t happened yet; he had only blindly retrieved it unable to look at it even for that brief time.
River's lab, her section of the library, and her room for those nights she didn't share with the Doctor were stored deep in the ship and kept exactly as she left them.
For herself, the only TT Capsule to have a child of flesh and blood, the Tardis mourned her loss by telling her sisters during their days while Gallifrey still lived. The other ships buzzed amongst themselves over such a thing even happening and they clamored for details. It only added to the buzz around her - the one who would steal/was stealing/stole a Time Lord, exploring the universe, being put in a human body; the one whose famous name of Tardis would become the name for them all ... of course she would have the flesh and blood child.
She shared the experience of River laughing and how it filled all the empty spaces; of the feel of her feet and fingertips as she went through the corridors, worked the controls, or puttered in her lab and library; of how she taught her child to fly and so many other things, including the exhilaration of the Vortex and traveling in it so naturally when you are already a part of it; of how her daughter would curl up under the console and they would just talk - actually fully and completely talk with one another. Sharing frustrations and bright laughter over their “beautiful idiot”; of how River once laughed that their chameleon circuits were both broken so they were happily stuck in these forms; or when her child hacked into the Justice Department's data to change the Tardis record from 'Listed as Stolen' to 'Confessed to Stealing a Time Lord'.
And the glorious moments when her child would leap into her maternal hold from somewhere in the universe, all vibrant light and energy, or beaten down, the Song muted, and needing her.
They would sing together, just like those moments of a developing Melody glowing golden in utero as she listened and moved to the Gallifreyan lullaby the ancient ship sang for her.
Then her sisters mourned with her over the point when the River would come no more, starting with the night of the Singing Towers when it is/would be/was the last time her child was with her. How River kissed her fingertips when asked and touched them to the heart of the Tardis before she unknowingly walked out the doors for the last time. How they were separated in the Library and didn't have a goodbye there; just the Tardis alone all those minutes, knowing what would happen, and then feeling that wonderful brightness that bonded them violently snuffed out. Gone. There was nothing she could do but wait as she always did until her Doctor came back, oblivious that she was in mourning.
Her sisters comforted her as best they could.
Just as her child comforted her in the loss of her sisters.
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