Chapter 1 - You Weren't Answering Your Phone
Professor River Song set her pen down with a sigh. She had read the same paragraph three times now, but was far too distracted to absorb it, let alone evaluate it competently enough to give her student the appropriate feedback. Being a professor was insufferably dull sometimes, especially grading papers, and she'd been spending a lot more time than usual lately on such routine tasks. It had been ages since she'd gone on an expedition and almost as long since she had seen her husband.
Her husband. He was most definitely responsible for her distracted state. She really wanted him to show up so she could slap him (among other things), but it had become nearly impossible to contact him since she had become a professor. When she did manage to get in touch with him, he was always too young to tell him everything that was on her mind, either in his "Pretty Boy" incarnation or in the one she had nicknamed "Baby Face", which was the most unpredictable one of all, sometimes knowing her very well and sometimes not knowing her at all. She had yet to reach the day she dreaded, the day her "Pretty Boy" didn't even know her name, but she was fairly certain she knew what was going on. His older self was avoiding her because he knew she was going to die soon.
That thought wouldn't usually bother her. She had spent most of her life courting death with nearly as much passion as she courted her Doctor. Everyone dies. That was a given. The key was to live as full a life as possible and she most certainly had. Besides, a part of her had been dead ever since that terrible day on Trenzalore when she had sealed her husband's tomb with his name and with her tears. He had made certain that she wouldn't be able to prevent his death no matter what she tried, as it was apparently the most fixed of fixed points in the history of the universe. Not that she didn't try anyway. Oh, how she'd tried. As she had cradled him in her arms and watched his life slip away, he had told her not to fret because she would have centuries to spend with his younger self.
"You and me, time and space, you watch us run."
His words had been scant consolation to her at the time, but he had been telling the truth. They had had some glorious centuries together. She'd seen things most people could never imagine, done things most people would never dream of doing, and enjoyed most of it immensely. Still, after watching him die for real, it had taken a very long time before she could gather up her courage to go back to the Stormcage so his younger selves could find her and she tried to stay away from his final incarnation after that. She understood perfectly why he would avoid her towards the end of her timeline because she had done the same with him after watching him die. It hurt too much to see him knowing how close he was to his end and the temptation to interfere was far too great.
No, she was willing to accept her death. Except for one thing. One thing that had changed her life forever and made her desperate to find him when he was old enough to confide in.
"One psychopath per TARDIS"
That had to be the lamest excuse that she had ever used on him. He hadn't pressed the issue and she knew it was because he was hurting so much over the loss of her parents that he wasn't thinking clearly. (Her"Baby Face" Doctor was always especially terrible at dealing with endings.) She was in so much pain herself that day that she couldn't think very clearly either and wasn't quite sure how to tell him her news anyway. So she hadn't told him what the TARDIS had revealed to her as she was piloting them away from New York after the Weeping Angel had taken her parents. Hadn't told him the real reason she couldn't stay with him in the TARDIS at that time.
She had always thought that it would be impossible for her to have children. Her reproductive system had never functioned the same way as a fully human woman's did (for which she was thankful, given all the nasty stuff Amy had told her about it when they were teenagers.) She'd didn't know if the Silence had sterilized her or if it was because of her hybrid nature, but she had always been certain that kids weren't going to be a part of her future. It hadn't really bothered her. She and the Doctor led such chaotic lives that having a child would be psychopathic. She certainly couldn't raise a child in prison and the Doctor...he needed too much raising himself. (He'd probably say the same about her and he'd be right.) Besides, she didn't think there was anything in the universe that could pry him away from his TARDIS and she had a hunch that prolonged exposure to the time vortex could be very dangerous for a child. It certainly had a strong impact on a developing embryo, as she could well attest. Which is why, when the TARDIS told her she was pregnant as they were leaving Manhattan, she knew she had to disembark as soon as possible and stay away until after the child was born. The TARDIS had agreed with her and brought them to the University straight away, refusing to budge until River stepped out the door, no matter how much the Doctor cajoled and banged on the console.
Every day since then, River regretted not telling him. It had been a very strange pregnancy and she had no one to ask for advice. She wasn't even sure how long she had been pregnant or which of his many faces the Doctor had been wearing when it happened. Until she had become a professor, he had visited her so often that he nearly met himself on many occasions, especially when she was still in the Stormcage. If her jailers had known how little time she was actually spending there, they would have been very cross...
No, it was definitively not a normal human pregnancy. For one thing, it took three years from the time she found out about it until she finally gave birth (one of the drawbacks to being part of a long-lived species, she supposed). Instead of morning sickness, she had an intense desire to solve calculus problems and write acrostic poetry. Instead of bloated ankles, she developed a heightened sense of time and how it flowed around her and everything else in the universe. She felt calmer and more at peace with herself than she ever had in her life. One of the only things a Time Lord pregnancy seemed to have in common with a human one was having odd cravings, in her case bananas, jelly babies, and fish fingers dipped in custard. She couldn't get enough of those.
She'd tried to contact the Doctor during her pregnancy, but when he'd shown up at the University, she'd taken one look in his eyes and could tell that he didn't even know they had a love life yet and wasn't very happy to see her. She couldn't risk time travel to find him elsewhere and elsewhen, so she had waited until after the twins were born before trying again. Even then, she'd had to be very careful, always inviting him to somewhere they could have their usual sort of adventure, so that she wouldn't damage the timeline if he showed up too young, which he always did. (He'd even shown up as the "Wild-Eyed Bohemian" once and she'd had to teleport away before he saw her.) After a while she had given up. None of his incarnations had ever given any indication that the two of them had children. Her husband was very good at keeping secrets, but this seemed like one he would have let slip sooner or later. It could just be that he would never find out.
No, that was unacceptable. If she was going to die soon, she needed to make sure that her children were with their father. They needed someone to tell them who they were and teach them how to deal with the joys and burdens of being a Time Lord and he was the only one in the Universe who could do so. If she couldn't be around, then the Doctor had better be. She also didn't want any of his enemies to find them and turn them into weapons against him. There had to be a way to make sure that he would raise them if she couldn't. She had tried everything, though...
Suddenly, she remembered a day, many years in her past, when the Doctor taught her how to make a hypercube to send a message to him.
"This method will only work for you once, my darling River, so please make sure to use it only when your need is particularly dire. You will know when the time is right. I guarantee that the message will reach me when it needs to."
She had almost forgotten about it, as it had happened so long ago, for her anyway. For him, it had happened quite late in his timeline (as she now knew), so she was certain that he had received a hypercube from her at some point. Well, a situation couldn't get much more dire than this. Since she didn't know when he would receive it, she'd have to be vague. She decided to make it very brief.
"Hello, sweetie.
Your children need you and so do I.
Come to the University as soon as you can.
X"
She sent it off and, almost instantaneously, she heard the unmistakeable whooshing noise of the TARDIS materializing. With its brakes on, as usual.
