FIC: Your Words Are My Lullaby
Summary: It didn’t matter how old she was, or if she was called Mels Zucker or River Song. Melody Pond carried her mother’s words, the image of her face, and the feel of her touch from Demon’s Run in her hearts.
Melody had escaped Graystark during the summer in Florida. The temperature changed now with the season and her moving North. Her thin dress had served her well for the first few months, but not much anymore. She had gotten lucky tonight and found a charity donation drop. She had been able to trade the nightgown she had escaped in for the dress she wore now from a place just like this. She pulled a large cardboard carton from around the dropbox's base and dragged it deeper into the dark, pushing it in between a couple trash cans to better hide herself.
The container held a small sweater, some clothes meant for an adult, and a few old toys and appliances. She got lucky again because the sweater was her size - kind of. It was as thin as her dress, but together they took the edge off the chill growing each week.
She took everything else out and folded herself to fit inside. She made a quiet promise as always to put everything back. Everything but the sweater. She said a quiet sorry to the little girl who would have gotten it instead. She hoped putting back the toys made up for it a bit.
An installed instinct whispered that leaving the box the way she had found it erased the evidence that she had been there. She knew somewhere in her mind that she was valuable property. No one went to all the trouble with Graystark and the spaceman to just let her go now. They'd be trying to find her.
The box’s walls kept the cool breeze off of her except for where it blew over the top. She shut her eyes and saw the picture again from her memory. The picture, the one of her mother holding her when she was a baby. She hated that she had needed to sacrifice it when she ran away. It would have been comforting on nights like this.
She clung to the image she could still see without physically holding the photo. Somewhere was that mother who would hold her again with a smile. A mom who would care this time that she cried for help.
The picture began to move in her sleepy mind. The mother talked about happy things and gave Melody everything she needed. Her dad was there too and he never let anything bad happen to her. They had a house that was warm at the right times, and fresh and cool the others. They said over and over, “Melody, I love you very much.”
Her parents had something else, something wonderful. They -- the ones called Father and Cleric and Bishop -- said the Doctor had a ship. It looked like a blue box on the outside and it could go anywhere. They never said anything bad about the ship, so Melody thought of it -- the Tardis -- as good. She and her mom and dad would go to all sorts of places in it, fantastic places. They’d be safe in the Tardis and all the places they went would be magic.
She imagined her mother tucking her into bed at night and the dream became the memory of reality. Her mother leaned over her, the red of her hair so colorful against all the white, and said.... something. Melody could hear the voice and see her face; bits of the words and the touch, a kiss... she drifted off to sleep.
Amy dreamt about getting away. She went off to see the world in the dream and it didn’t matter where exactly. Rory and Mels were with her, because it was a given that they would be. Rory had balked and nearly stayed behind, and she’d been almost good with it. She’d have time to run wild before settling down again in boring old Leadworth. But then he ran to have adventures too, because she was there, and it was better with the two of them together.
Mels: she ran with her and in front of her, right into trouble with a grin, a laugh, and a ferocious temper for anyone who dared give Amy or Rory a hard time. Of course, Amy was the same way, so that worked.
She didn’t dream of the Raggedy Doctor. He had been imaginary or was long gone. She found a way to do it all on her own.
It was a great dream until she heard pounding coming from somewhere and Mels yelling, “Open the window!” She didn’t wake up at first, but looked around the castle dungeon in her fantasy (because, of course, Mels had found her way into prison even here). The shouting became, “That’s it! I’m jimmying the lock!” and thoughts of her parents’ complaints about that opened her eyes.
Mels actually did have the window lock pried open and was climbing in. Amy ran to the hallway and headed off her mum and dad getting out of bed to inspect the noise. “It’s nothing! Just Mels!” She heard them grumble and close their bedroom door. She turned back around to find her best friend giving the little blue box, that Amy still wasn’t able to throw away, a twirl.
“Just once,” she reprimanded, “be normal!”
Mels said nothing. She dropped her jacket on the floor, kicked off her boots, and walked dully across the room to drop in Amy’s bed.
She slid in next to her. “Budge over,” and Mels obediently moved away from the center to give her room. The odd thing was, Mels wanted more sleepovers now than she had when they were kids. She actually wanted to sleep too. Lots of little girls had slumber parties where the whole point was not to slumber at all. Her best friend had it all backwards.
Amy had two pillows under her so Mels had to look up. Her eyes held little light and the muscles in her face sagged a tiny bit. Amy got worried. “You can’t sleep again?"
She got no answer at first, just Mels burrowing against her side. She moved her head to Amy’s shoulder. “Tell me a story.”
She rolled her eyes, even though she was still worried. “This again?”
Mels tunneled closer like she needed Amy’s body heat to stay warm, but it was a nice night and the room was comfortable.
“Fine. Once upon a time, there was a brilliant person named Amy Pond. She could never sleep through the night, because of a girl named Melody who kept waking her up like a cranky toddler.”
The dark eyes fluttered closed, but couldn’t settle. Amy looked down at her, concerned, and softened her voice as she teased:
“So Amy, who had to have the patience of a saint, because she always had to put up with Melody doing things like not using the front door to come into the house at night, and having to scold her, like she had to be the grownup when it was no fun at all....”
Mels slept. Amy watched her for a second to make sure, grumbled for the sake of it, and snuggled down to get comfortable. Mels' head stayed on her shoulder and Amy didn't move it as she drifted off again.
River sat between her parents on the couch as they watched television, just a quiet family night together. She had run into her parents’ arms when she had first come home. The way she had looked made Amy and Rory clutch her tightly until she was ready to let go, while Amy thought of a hundred different ways she’d punish the Doctor if he was the reason River felt this way. She got out her ‘daughter diary’, as she called it, and asked where they were. Everything made sense when River told them she had come back from Demon’s Run and telling them who she was. The way they had reacted then.... awkward, unsure, accepting but holding back a bit... no wonder she had come to them with such force and a need for reassurance.
So they settled her between them. She started out leaning more towards Rory with exhaustion written all over her. He switched the channel to golf as soon as he saw that. River didn’t actually hate the sport. In fact, the last time Rory took her out on the links, she had a grand time showing off for him with that advanced mind of hers calculating the science to get miraculous scores. And when some pillock insulted Rory and pushed past to go ahead of them, she sent her first ball to knock the man’s into the rough, and the second to hit him right on his bald spot. Rory dragged her out of there before they faced a lawsuit while River laughed the whole way and couldn’t wait to tell Amy.
But she got bored watching it and that’s why Rory put it on now: to hopefully lull her to sleep. But no matter how tired she was, she wasn’t sleepy.
She moved over to put her head on Amy’s shoulder. “Tell me a story.”
“There's something else that didn’t change with regeneration.” She glanced down and found River’s eyes looking up at her. “Okay. Once upon a time, there was still an amazingly brilliant person named Amy Pond. And she still had a trouble making daughter named Melody.”
River frowned. “And?”
“And-- Melody went flying about the universe in space and time.”
Said daughter sighed. Amy wondered what she was missing that River thought she obviously knew. “And she was very, very brave.”
“Yes, she was,” Amy repeated. “She was so brave that she made even the Daleks afraid of her.”
She still wasn’t giving River what she wanted, because she was fed the next line. They apparently had done this a lot of times already in River’s life, and the fact she didn’t catch on that it was Amy’s first time proved just how tired she was. “And no matter where she went, she was never alone.”
“No, she wasn’t,” Amy repeated again. “It didn’t matter where she was, she was never--”
The pieces fell into place. Mels-River-Melody pressed against her, wanting that physical contact like when her tiny body was held in Amy’s arms; the words her mother gave her before she was taken away by Kovarian. Her wanting to sleep over when they were older and always asking Amy to talk: because she had to wait for Amy’s voice to mature so she sounded the same as when she spoke on Demon’s Run.
“That’s what this has been about, this whole time,” she whispered.
Melody’s lullaby was her mother talking to her. And now that Amy had lived Demon’s Run too, her daughter could hear those words again.
Amy turned a little and pulled River into her arms with the head of curls settled in the curve of her neck and shoulder. She knew River had her memories of that goodbye, cleared of the fog from the Silence with the Doctor’s help. But Amy hadn’t memorized it. That goodbye had been so important that she had been careful of each word she had said, but it didn’t mean she knew them by heart. She worried she wouldn’t get this right.
But as she talked, it came flooding back. She was lucky now; she didn’t have to say the painful things she had to back then before they were torn apart.
“I want you to know that you are loved, Melody. That you'll be safe and cared for and protected.” Amy hoped that would it be true; that despite the life River lived, they could somehow protect her. The Doctor had promised he'd do the same thing too.
She reached for her daughter’s hand and felt River wrap it around only her mother’s index finger, just like when she was a baby. Amy curled the rest of her fingers around her daughter’s. “You are very, very brave, just like I said you would be. And wherever you go, Melody, I promise you, you will never be alone. Because you have your father and you have me. Not even an army can get in our way.” She kissed the head nestled against hers.
The prayer leaf that Lorna Bucket had given her was a promise that Melody would always find them. They would always be her mum and dad, ready to love her, ready to teach her things, and support her. Because that’s what parents did, no matter how old the child.
Rory leaned over to see River’s face. Amy mouthed, “Is she asleep”, and he nodded. She put a throw pillow in her lap and slowly lowered River down. Her daughter never let go of her hand and cuddled into Amy’s lap.
Rory gently stretched River’s legs behind him so she’d be more comfortable. “Why do I always get the feet?” he joked quietly.
“It’s your job.”
He slipped off the sofa and moved down to place a kiss on River’s head. He stroked her forehead with his thumb and just looked at her.
“I will kill you if you wake her up,” Amy whispered fiercely.
“Oh, that’s nice. She’s still sleeping.” He got a goopy expression on his face. “She’s smiling a little.” He kept looking at her for a long moment and then went to pick her up. “I’ll take her up to her room.”
“No you won’t.” She wasn’t giving up holding her daughter, not yet. River had acted like they did this a hundred times, maybe more, and Amy looked forward to every one of them. That didn’t mean she was ending this one early.
Rory understood and slipped back down the couch. He lifted his daughter’s legs ever so gently so he could move them across his lap where he wrapped an arm around them. “Next time, you get the feet.”
“Don’t be stupid. I'm the one who has to talk so she can sleep.”
“You can talk from down there.”
She glared at him and he pretended he didn’t see it. She made a mental note to update her daughter diary with what had happened tonight, and he picked up the remote from where he had dropped it to switch to the DVD in the player. He lowered the volume and turned on the subtitles so they didn’t miss anything. They both settled back into the cushions so they were comfortable for however long Melody slept.