Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who, River, Amy, Rory, Melody, the TARDIS, etc. (Sadly.)

It was Amy who found it first. In fact, her gasp was what alerted him even to its presence.

"What have you got there, Pond?" The Doctor asked, doing a vaulting leap over the railings of the console to join her on the stairs.

"Oh…" Amy's eyes shifted away, a little guiltily. "It's Mels' – River's – well, it's her sketchbook."

Fascinating. He'd never pictured River drawing, somehow. Of course, anything was possible especially in regards to River Song and what she was capable of. He should have learned long ago not to be surprised by her; but here he was. Surprised again.

"Ooh, let me see," he said, reaching forward to take it from her, but Amy was the one surprising him now. She held it behind her back, shaking her head.

"Better not," she said, teasingly. "She gets very protective of it. She's only even shown it to me once or twice, and only a few pages, not everything. Actually, she gave me one of the pages… said I could keep it.

"But she doesn't like anyone to see it. No, Doctor," Amy said, still shaking her head at him, and passing the book around her body as he attempted to lunge behind her. "I'm serious. Have Rory tell you about the day she broke his nose, when he tried to take a blank page from the back."

"She broke his nose?" the Doctor asked, momentarily distracted. "Is that what happens, if you break your nose? It grows back longer?" He did a Pinocchio-mine in front of his face, and Amy glowered. He tried to take that opportunity to try grab for it again, but no good. She shifted her weight over and promptly sat on the book, thereby ensuring its safety.

"She gave," Amy told him, slowly enunciating each syllable, "her own Dad a broken nose." She leaned over and caught his eyes with her own.

"I don't know how much clearer I can be, Doctor. Don't touch it."

"Wait a minute," he said. "There's a question I'm not asking here; a very, very important question. If she is so protective about this book that even you have only seen it once or twice…why do you have it, then?"

Amy suddenly looked very shifty, and her entire posture went defensive. "I went into her room here on the TARDIS…" she mumbled. "Wanted to see if there was anything for the laundry…"

A lie, through and through. Amy might say that hewas no good at lying, but she wasn't either. Especially not if you knew her. Amelia Pond avoided laundry, as one would the carnivorous bees in the gardens of Rochen that tried to take a surreptitious nip out of you when you stopped to smell the flowers.

"Pond," the Doctor said, standing up and offering her a hand. She accepted, but kept her fingers on the book; clearly ready to whisk it away from him if he tried to grab it again.

Which he didn't, of course. No good trying now, when she was on guard.

"Do you think I was born yesterday?"

"No, I think you were born 909 years ago," Amy sighed. "But —alright! I was snooping a bit. She's my daughter! I'm allowed. Plus, she left it on the bed."

"Well," the Doctor said, templing his hands and tapping his index fingers together, "Mels. She was just a bit, well, you know…" he lowered his voice, "violent."

"Mmm," Amy said, fixing him with a wide-eyed, placating look.

"River is very different. Calm, even. I think she'd let me see it," he told Amy. "At least she'd never break my nose."

"Mmm," Amy said again. She turned and walked out of the room, without saying anything more.

"We might call her River Song now, Doctor, but trust me," Amy said when she returned, sans book. He tried to hide his scowl. "Some parts of her have not changed that much.

"Don't touch the book."

. _ . _ . _ . _ . _ . _ . _ . _ . _ .

The trouble with humans is that they always make Rules.

Don't say this. Don't go there. Don't do that.

Don't touch the sketchbook.

The nice thing about being the Doctor was that he never bothered to follow them.

It was late when he snuck into River's room. So late that Amy had been talking in her sleep for a few hours now, and Rory's answering snores had gotten boring. He'd already done some great things that night. Averting a possible war between two neighboring planets. Watched a supernova explode. Killer Karaoke at a scruffy little bar on planet Ames. (He made a mental note to take River back there; shooting aliens who sang bad karaoke would appeal to her.)

But now it was late, and he was bored; and what else should a Time Lord do when he's bored at night… and temptation to ease said boredom is just down a hallway, three turns to the left, a sharp right past the coffee machine and then two doors away?

Yes. That's right. Take a little peek through his wife's belongings.

Not all of them, clearly. He'd done that once, checking whose bedroom it was when it first appeared on the TARDIS. Curiously opened a drawer, and found some interesting things that…

Well, suffice it to say, his cheeks were very red, for quite a while.

But this was safe. Amy had placed the book back onto the bed, and that's just where he stole it from, before running out of the room with the purloined book beneath his arm.

He wasn't sure what he'd find when he opened it. Childish stick figures? Complicated, three-dimensional still lifes? Plans for robbing bank vaults?

Oh, the Doctor was expecting everything other than what he found.

Circles.

Circles within circles within circles. Wobbly in the center, but by the outside of the first page, they were already being executed with confidence and ease. Modern Gallifreyan, written by a little girl on Earth who could only have been born with the knowledge, just as all Time Lords were.

And suddenly he understood why she was so protective of her book; why she would have shown only Amy a page or two; why she hadn't even blinked when he told her to keep a journal of the times when they met.

It wasn't a sketchbook at all. River had been keeping a diary, long before she ever got that little blue book.